Amimo, J.O.; Machuka, E.M.; Abworo, E.O.; Vlasova, A.N.; Pelle, R. Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of Porcine Astroviruses Reveals Novel Genetically Diverse Strains Circulating in East African Smallholder Pig Farms. Viruses2020, 12, 1262.
Amimo, J.O.; Machuka, E.M.; Abworo, E.O.; Vlasova, A.N.; Pelle, R. Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of Porcine Astroviruses Reveals Novel Genetically Diverse Strains Circulating in East African Smallholder Pig Farms. Viruses 2020, 12, 1262.
Amimo, J.O.; Machuka, E.M.; Abworo, E.O.; Vlasova, A.N.; Pelle, R. Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of Porcine Astroviruses Reveals Novel Genetically Diverse Strains Circulating in East African Smallholder Pig Farms. Viruses2020, 12, 1262.
Amimo, J.O.; Machuka, E.M.; Abworo, E.O.; Vlasova, A.N.; Pelle, R. Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of Porcine Astroviruses Reveals Novel Genetically Diverse Strains Circulating in East African Smallholder Pig Farms. Viruses 2020, 12, 1262.
Abstract
Astroviruses (AstVs) are occurs globally and are common causes of gastroenteritis in human and animals. The genetic diversity and epidemiology of AstVs in Africa is not well known, hence, we aimed to genetically characterize astroviruses in asymptomatic smallholder piglets in East Africa. Twenty-four samples randomly selected from 446 piglets (<6 months old), initially collected for rotavirus study, was sequenced for metagenomic analysis. Thirteen (13/24) samples had contigs with high identity to genus Mamastrovirus. Analysis of 7 strains with complete (or near complete) genome revealed variable nucleotide and amino acid sequence identities with known PoAstV strains. The U083 and K321 strains had nucleotide sequence similarities ranging from 66.4 to 75.4 % to the known PoAstV2 strains, nucleotide sequence similarity of U460 strain with known PoAstV3 ranged 57.0 to 65.1 % to the, while K062, K366, K451, and K456 strains showed nucleotide sequence similarities of 63.5 to 80 % to the known PoAstV4 strains. The low sequence identities (<90 %) indicate that novel genotypes of PoAstVs are circulating in the study area. Multiple recombination events were detected in our PoAstV4 strains, indicating that the genetic diversity observed in these strains may be due to recombination. Importantly, we identified potential candidate epitopes with conserved peptides in our PoAstV strains that could aid in the design of immune diagnosis tools and subunit vaccines. Our data provide new intuitions into the genetic structure of porcine astroviruses in East African.
Keywords
porcine astroviruses; linear antigenic epitopes; recombination; glycosylation; whole genome sequences; East Africa
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Virology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
