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Cost-effective Method for Microbial Source Tracking Using Specific Human and Animal Viruses
Published on: December 3, 2011
Identification of a porcine calicivirus related genetically to human sapoviruses
V Martella1, E Lorusso, K Banyai
1Dipartimento di Sanità Pubblica e Zootecnia, Facoltà di Medicina Veterinaria di Bari, S.p. per Casamassima Km 3, 70010 Valenzano, Bari, Italy. v.martella@veterinaria.uniba.it
Abstract:
Whether animals may act as reservoirs for human caliciviruses is unclear. By sequence analysis of a short fragment of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) region, porcine sapovirus (SaV) strains that genetically resemble human SaVs have been detected in piglets, but more-informative sequences (capsid gene) were not available for a precise characterization. In this study, the 3' terminus (the 3' end of open reading frame 1 [ORF1], including the polymerase complex and the complete capsid; ORF2; and the 3' untranslated region) of one such human SaV-like strain, 43/06-18p3/2006/It, was determined, revealing that these viruses are more related genetically to human (47.4 to 54.9% amino acid identity) than to animal (35.2 to 44.7% amino acid identity) SaVs in the capsid gene. In addition, the recombination-prone RdRp-capsid junction region was highly conserved with those of human SaVs of genogroup GI. The presence of porcine viruses similar to human SaVs is a significant finding because of the potential for zoonotic infections or generation of porcine/human recombinants.
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