Recovery of divergent avian bornaviruses from cases of proventricular dilatation disease: Identification of a candidate etiologic agent

Kistler, Amy L; Gancz, Ady; Clubb, Susan; Skewes-Cox, Peter; Fischer, Kael; Sorber, Katherine; Chiu, Charles Y; Lublin, Avishai; Mechani, Sara; Farnoushi, Yigal; Greninger, Alexander; Wen, Christopher C; Karlene, Scott B; Ganem, Don; DeRisi, Joseph L

Phylogenetic and pairwise sequence analyses support this conclusion. Genomic and sub-genomic phylogenetic analyses of nucleotide sequences place the recovered ABV sequence on a branch distant from representative members of the 4 distinct genetic isolates of BDV for which complete genome sequences are available ( Figure 2B , see Additional file 4: Phylogenetic relationships between subgenomic loci of ABV and representative BDV genomes). Strikingly, the ABV genome sequence segregates to a position virtually equidistant from both the set of 3 closely related BDV isolates (V/Ref, H1766, and He/80) and the divergent No/98 BDV isolate ( Figure 2B ). Moreover, in contrast to the previously identified divergent No/98 isolate, which retains a high level of conservation with other BDV isolates at the amino acid level, the ABV isolate also shows significant sequence divergence in the predicted amino acid sequence of every ORF in the genome ( Table 2) .