West Nile Virus Positive Blood Donation and Subsequent Entomological Investigation, Austria, 2014

Kolodziejek, Jolanta; Seidel, Bernhard; Jungbauer, Christof; Dimmel, Katharina; Kolodziejek, Michael; Rudolf, Ivo; Hubálek, Zdenek; Allerberger, Franz; Nowotny, Norbert

The phylogenetic tree based on nucleotide sequences coding for entire polyproteins constructed by the NJ method and MCL model of the MEGA6 program support a clear division of the WNV lineage 2 strains into the recently described four clades (2a-2d) [21] . While clades 2a and 2c consist of only one strain each (both from Madagascar), clade 2b is composed of two WNV strains, one from South Africa 1958 and the other from Cyprus 1968 (Fig 1) . Central/ Southern European strains (cluster 2d-1) cluster within the largest clade 2d together with Eastern European strains (cluster 2d-5) and several viruses mostly from Africa, isolated between 1937 and 2008 (clusters 2d-2, 2d-3, 2d-4 and 2d-6; Fig 1) . As strain Sarafend was not included in the study by Mac Mullen [21] , we denoted it clade 2bc due to its position between clades 2b and 2c. The division into the above clades and clusters was confirmed using the ML method of MEGA6 (data not shown). Similar clustering was also obtained by analyzing the corresponding entire polyprotein sequences (data not shown).