Molecular characterization of Porcine sapelovirus in Hunan, China

Abstract

Porcine sapeloviruses (PSVs) are widely distributed in pig populations; however, little information on their evolutionary history and the mechanisms driving their divergence is available. Therefore, in the present study, 241 fecal samples and 91 intestinal contents collected from pigs at 26 farms in Hunan, China, were tested for the presence of PSVs. The overall PSV positivity rate was 46.39 %, with a particularly high infection rate detected in nursery and fattening pigs. A total of 29 PSV strains (PSV-HuNs) were isolated, with these showing high genetic diversity based on phylogenetic and pairwise distance analyses of the capsid-protein gene sequences. Incongruence between phylognetic trees of the capsid-protein and 3CD regions indicated frequent recombination within the PSV-HuNs, and a putative recombinant hotspot near the 3' end of the P1 region was identified. Our results suggested that recombination played an important role in driving PSV genetic diversity and evolution.

High prevalence, genetic diversity and a potentially novel genotype of Sapelovirus A (Picornaviridae) in enteric and respiratory samples in Hungarian swine farms

“…The results of pairwise sequence comparisons between the study virus and its closest PSV-1 relative of all 12 viral peptide-encoding genome regions and different positions of SZ1M-F/PSV/HUN/2013 in the P1 and 3D phylogenetic trees may also reflect the independent origin of the P1 and P2-P3 genome regions. Recombination is relatively frequent among PSVs and a putative recombinant hotspot was identified near the 3′ end of the P1 region of PSVs [10,20], which could be the potential recombination breakpoint of SZ1M-F/PSV/HUN/2013, therefore the recombinant nature of the study PSV strain is plausible. Unfortunately, due to the lack of potential parental sequences of P1 none of the recombination detection programs (RDP4 or SimPlot) showed clear in silico evidence supporting this hypothesis (data not shown).…”

“…The N-terminal cleavage sites of the P1 capsid proteins of PSVs are experimentally determined [18]. The VP1 capsid protein, which contains major antigenic epitopes, is generally used for sero/genotyping of sapelovirus strains [10,[18][19][20]. Although PSVs are known to be a genetically highly diverse group of viruses, with recombination potential, only a single genotype of PSV has been identified based largely on VP1 sequence analyses [10,16,20].…”

“…The VP1 capsid protein, which contains major antigenic epitopes, is generally used for sero/genotyping of sapelovirus strains [10,[18][19][20]. Although PSVs are known to be a genetically highly diverse group of viruses, with recombination potential, only a single genotype of PSV has been identified based largely on VP1 sequence analyses [10,16,20]. Beside the recently published large-scale epidemiological studies on PSV conducted mostly in Far East countries such as China and Japan [7,10,20] little information is available about the prevalence and genetic diversity of PSVs circulating in Europe particularly in Hungary.…”

“…Although PSVs are known to be a genetically highly diverse group of viruses, with recombination potential, only a single genotype of PSV has been identified based largely on VP1 sequence analyses [10,16,20]. Beside the recently published large-scale epidemiological studies on PSV conducted mostly in Far East countries such as China and Japan [7,10,20] little information is available about the prevalence and genetic diversity of PSVs circulating in Europe particularly in Hungary. Mostly single PSV strains or partial PSV sequences have been described from European countries including Spain, France and Italy [21][22][23].…”

Sapelovirus

“…14.3 Kumari et al 2019). A Chinese study reported the recombination hotspot near 3′ of the VP1 gene and showed six interclades within PSV recombinant strains (Yang et al 2017).…”