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| In 1988, during the seal plaque epidemic in the North
Sea (caused by phocine distemper virus), a picorna-like virus was
isolated from harbour (common) seals (Phoca vitulina)(Osterhaus,
1988). The virus was found in the lungs of 20 of 22 seals investigated (Osterhaus,
1988). The 3'
end of the genome was amplified using a pan-picornavirus RT-PCR and its
nucleotide sequence determined (454 nt) (Knowles, 2005). Comparison with
all picornavirus sequence known at the time suggested that it belonged
to a novel genus. 01/10/2007: The complete genome of "seal picornavirus type 1" (isolate HO.02.21) isolated from Arctic ringed seals (Phoca hispida) in Canada, has recently been released on GenBank (EU142040; Kapoor et al., 2007). Comparison of the sequences obtained by Knowles (2005) and Kapoor et al. (2007) shows a nucleotide identity of 87.7% and an amino acid identity (of the available 3Dpol region) of 95.7%. Interestingly, SePV-1 appears to possess two VPg's: SAYEGCSTRKTARQLARSVVGE || | | ||| ||| GAYDGNVKRTTARELARKAIPSEQ This is the only picornavirus (apart from foot-and-mouth disease virus) so far found which potentially has multiple genome-linked proteins. References Kapoor, A., Victoria, J., Simmonds, P., Wang, C., Shafer, R.W., Nims, R., Nielsen, O. and Delwart, E. (2008). A highly divergent picornavirus in a marine mammal. J. Virol. 82: 311-320. Knowles, N.J. (2005). A pan-picornavirus RT-PCR: identification of novel picornavirus species. EUROPIC 2005: XIIIth Meeting of the European Study Group on the Molecular Biology of Picornaviruses, Lunteren, The Netherlands, 23-29th May 2005. Abstract A06. Osterhaus, A.D.M.E. (1988). Seal death. Nature, Lond. 334: 301-302. |