M gene analysis of canine coronavirus strains detected in Korea

Jeoung, Seok-Young; Ann, So-Yun; Kim, Hyun-Tae; Kim, Doo

The M glycoprotein of CCV can elicit strong immune responses [8, 21] . The mutations in the M gene might confer some sort of growth advantage or avoiding host immunity [27] . The main purposes of this study were to determine the genetic diversity among CCV strains detected in Korea and examine their relationships to previously characterized strains. Twenty-two CCV strains from domestic dogs with enteritis in Korea were evaluated. These isolates shared high nucleotide and amino acid identities with each other. The nucleotide and amino acid sequence homologies indicated that most of the Korean strains were more closely related to the CCV type II strain than the FCoV-like CCV (type I) strain. This result is similar to findings from investigations conducted in other countries. Escutenaire et al. [9] showed that Swedish isolates share a higher identity with typical type II CCV based on the deduced amino acid sequences of the 5' region of the M gene.