Molecular characterization of a Chinese variant of the Flury-LEP strain | Ren Virology Journal 2010 7 80 http content 7 1 80 VIROLOGY JOURNAL SHORT REPORT Open Access Molecular characterization of a Chinese variant of the Flury-LEP strain Linzhu Ren Abstract The entire genome of rabies virus vaccine strain Flury-LEP-C a Chinese variant of the rabies virus vaccine strain Flury-LEP was sequenced. The overall length of the genome of Flury-LEP-C strain was 11 924 nucleotides nt comprising a leader sequence of 58 nt nucleoprotein N gene of 1353 nt phosphoprotein P gene of 894 nt matrix protein M gene of 609 nt glycoprotein G gene of 1575 nt RNA-dependent RNA polymerase RdRp L gene of 6384 nt and a trailer region of 70 nt. There was TGAAAAAAA TGA7 consensus sequence in the end of each gene in Flury-LEP-C genome except G gene which had a GAGAAAAAAA sequence in the end of the non-coding G-L region. There were AACAYYYCT consensus start signal close to the TGA7. Flury-LEP-C has 310 nucleotides more than HEP-Flury in G-L intergenic region. The analysis showed that the residue at 333 of the mature G protein was Arg which was reported to be related to pathogenicity. Compared with FluryLEP there were 19 different amino acids AAs in five proteins of Flury-LEP-C including 15 AAs which were identical with corresponding residues of Hep-Flury and 4 AAs which were neither identical with the residues of FluryLEP nor with the residues of Hep-Flury. The results showed the topology of the phylogenetic trees generated by two protein sequences were similar. It was demonstrated that HN10 BD06 FJ009 FJ008 D02 D01 F04 F02 have a close relationship to CTN-1 and CTN181 and MRV was closely related to Flury-LEP HEP-Flury and Flury-LEP-C. Findings The rabies virus belongs to the Rhabdoviridae family and the Lyssavirus genus. The genome of the rabies virus is a non-segmented anti-sense single-stranded RNA which is about 12 000 nucleotides nt long. Viral RNA encodes five major proteins nucleoprotein N-protein phosphoprotein P protein matrix protein .
