[Isolation, identification and genome sequenceing of a rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus strain WHNRH]

The rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) is a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus of the family Caliciviridae with a high morbidity and mortality rates of about 90% in adult rabbits. A strain of rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus named WHNRH was isolated and identified in the research. The genome of WHNRH was then sequenced. Primers were designed referring to the genome sequences of RHDV published in GenBank and a RACE was applied to get the 5' terminus sequences. The other terminus sequences of WHNRH was acquired referring to the genome's polyA structure of RHDV. The genome was amplified with RT-PCR. All the RT-PCR products were cloned into the pMD18-T vector and sequenced. The sequencing result indicated that the complete genome of RHDV isolated strain WHNRH was composed of 7437nt (not including polyA of 3' terminus), the identities were between 89.4% and 97.1% compared with the published genome sequences of six RHDV strains. The ORF1 of the genome of WHNRH was between 10nt and 7044nt and a polypeptide with 2344 amino acids was coded, the identities of nucleotide and amino acids sequences were 89.1% - 96.1% and 96.0% - 98.4% respectively compared with the six published RHDV strains. The ORF2 of the genome of WHNRH was between 7025nt and 7378nt and a polypeptide with 177 amino acids was coded, the identities of nucleotide and amino acids sequences were all between 92.1% and 96.9% compared with the six published RHDV strains.