Abstract
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) can infect humans, pigs, and many other animals, but recombination in HEV has rarely been reported. In the present study, phylogenetic and recombination analysis was performed on 557 complete HEV genome sequences from the GenBank database. A potentially significant quadruple recombination event was identified by recombination detection analysis. The recombinant progeny virus, HEV_32_Manchester_301214, was produced by inter-genotype recombination between the major parent HEPAC-44 and the minor parent HE-JA15-1335. HEV_32_Manchester_301214 and HEPAC-44 belong to genotype 3, while HE-JA15-1335 belongs to genotype 1, and these three strains were all isolated from humans. Three breakpoints of the four recombination events occurred in the ORF2 region, while another occurred in the ORF1 region. This quadruple recombination event was confirmed by phylogenetic analysis. The genotype, host, and recombination regions of the three strains were analyzed, and the analysis results provide valuable information for future research on HEV diversity.
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Funding
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 81971945), the State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Etiological Biology, Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SKLVEB2019KFKT019), and the Zhenjiang Key Social Development Project (Grant no. SH2018050).
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HS designed this research. SL, HS, MD, HG, and HW performed the data analysis. HS, MC, SL, and XB wrote the manuscript.
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Shen, H., Liu, S., Ding, M. et al. A quadruple recombination event discovered in hepatitis E virus. Arch Virol 166, 3405–3408 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-021-05251-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-021-05251-3