Whole genome characterization and evolutionary analysis of bovine ephemeral fever virus isolated in Iran

Bovine ephemeral fever virus (BEFV) is an economically important arthropod-borne virus of cattle and water buffaloes which is enzootic in Africa, Australia, and Asia. We characterized the entire length of BEFV BA/RZ/IR strain genome isolated in Iran and compared to the all BEFV full genomes available in the GenBank. The BEFV genomes were phylogenetically classified as 4 lineages including the Middle Eastern, East Asian, Australian, and South African lineages. The Iranian BA/RZ/IR strain, which displayed maximum sequence identity (96.72%) to the Chinese JT02L strain was clustered as a separate branch in the East Asian lineage of the virus. Using Shannon entropy analysis, amino acid variations were detected in the all proteins encoded by BEFV genomes. Particularly, the polymerase L and the accessory proteins Gns, α2 and β exhibited the highest amino acid variations suggesting their significance in the viral replication efficiency. Our bioinformatics analyses also predict the occurrence of recombination event within the East Asian lineage of BEFV genomes. Our data show that the Chinese Henan 1 may be a hybrid strain constructed of the Chinese JT02L and Iranian BA/RZ/IR BEFV strains as the major and minor parents, respectively. These computational analyses suggest that the homologous recombination may be an evolutionary mechanism for BEFV as a member of the Rhabdoviridae family.