RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Homologous Recombination as an Evolutionary Force in African Swine Fever Viruses
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 460832
DO 10.1101/460832
A1 Zhaozhong Zhu
A1 Chao-Ting Xiao
A1 Yunshi Fan
A1 Zena Cai
A1 Congyu Lu
A1 Gaihua Zhang
A1 Taijiao Jiang
A1 Yongjun Tan
A1 Yousong Peng
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/16/460832.abstract
AB Recent outbreaks of African swine fever virus (ASFV) in China severely influenced the swine industry of the country. Currently, there is no effective vaccine or drugs against ASFVs. How to effectively control the virus is challenging. In this study, we have analyzed all the publicly available ASFV genomes and demonstrated that there was a large genetic diversity of ASFV genomes. Interestingly, the genetic diversity was mainly caused by extensive genomic insertions and/or deletions (indels) instead of the point mutations. The genomic diversity of the virus resulted in proteome diversity. Over 250 types of proteins were inferred from the ASFV genomes, among which only 144 were observed in all analyzed viruses. Further analyses showed that the homologous recombination may contribute much to the indels, as supported by significant associations between the occurrence of extensive recombination events and the indels in the ASFV genomes. Repeated elements of dozens of nucleotides in length were observed to widely distribute and cluster in the adjacent positions of ASFV genomes, which may facilitate the occurrence of homologous recombination. Moreover, two enzymes, which were possibly related to the homologous recombination, i.e., a Lambda-like exonuclease with a YqaJ-like viral recombinase domain, and a DNA topoisomerase II, were found to be conservative in all the analyzed ASFVs. This work highlighted the importance of the homologous recombination in the evolution of the ASFVs, and helped with the strategy development of the prevention and control of the virus.