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Title: ANALYSIS OF 45 KB OF DNA LOCATED AT THE LEFT END OF THE CHLORELLA VIRUS PBCV-1 GENOME

Author
item LU, ZHIQIANG - UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
item LI, LU - UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
item ZHANG, YANPING - UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
item KUTISH, GERALD - UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
item Rock, Daniel
item VAN ETTEN, JAMES - UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

Submitted to: Journal of Virology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/15/1994
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Currently, African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the sole member of an unnamed DNA virus family. Chlorella virus (CV) is a large polyhedral DNA containing virus that replicates in a unicellular, eukaryotic green alga. Like ASFV, CV is morphologically similar to iridoviruses and its DNA structure resembles that of poxviruses such as vaccinia virus. Because of these similarities, we hypothesized that ASFV and CV may be related viruses, perhaps sharing a distant common ancestor and that knowledge of CV might provide some insight into complexities of ASFV. To examine this question we identified and analyzed the genes contained within a region of the CV DNA molecule and compared them to those present in ASFV. CV genes showed little similarity to those of ASFV. This result indicates that while these two viruses share some structural features, they are different from one another at the genetic level and unlikely to be related.

Technical Abstract: Forty-five kilobases (kb) of DNA, including the previously sequenced 2.2-kb inverted repeat region, located at the left termini of the 330-kb Chlorella virus PBCV-1 genome were sequenced and analyzed. Eighty-five complete open reading frames (ORFs) larger than 195 nucleotides were identified. Thirty-seven of the 85 ORFs, which are densely packed on both strands of the DNA, were considered major ORFs. Fifteen of the major ORFs have similarity to genes in the databases, including bacterial glycerophosphoryl diester phosphodiesterase, bacteriophage T4 endonuclease, V, D-isomer specific 2-hydroxyacid dehydrogenases, and B-alanine synthetase and bacterial nitrilases. Two major ORFs resemble the virus major capsid protein. Three major ORFs contain three or more ankyrin-like repeat elements and four ORFs encode proline-rich proteins.