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

Pairwise sequence analyses of the nucleotide and predicted amino acid sequence from the L region of the genome provide additional evidence for surprising genetic diversity among the ABV branches compared to that seen among the BDV branches (Table 4 ). Although derived from coding sequences of one of the more divergent genes of the bornavirus genome ( Table 2 , L gene), the region of the L gene we have used for PCR screening is relatively conserved among the BDV isolates, ranging from 81-98% at the nucleotide level, and 96-99% at the amino acid level (Table 4 ). In contrast, the sequence identity shared across this region of the genome among the ABV branches of the tree ranges from 77-83% at the nucleotide level and 86-94% at the amino acid level. Taken together with the phylogenetic analysis described above, these data provide evidence that these ABV isolates form a new, genetically diverse branch of the Bornaviridae phylogeny that is significantly diverged from the founder BDV isolates.