Title Comparative Analysis of the Genomes of Bombyx mandarina and Bombyx mori Nucleopolyhedroviruses
Author Yi-Peng Xu1, Zheng-Pei Ye2, Chang-Ying Niu2, Yan-Yuan Bao1, Wen-Bing Wang3, Wei-De Shen3, and Chuan-Xi Zhang1*
Address 1Ministry of Agriculture Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, P. R. China, 2Institute of Insect Resources, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China, 3School of Life Science, Suzhou University, Suzhou 215123, P. R. China
Bibliography Journal of Microbiology, 48(1),102-110, 2010,
DOI
Key Words B. mandarina, B. mori, nucleopolyhedrovirus, genome sequence comparison
Abstract The Bombyx mandarina nucleopolyhedrovirus (BomaNPV) S1 strain can infect the silkworm, Bombyx mori, but is significantly less virulent than B. mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) T3 strain. The complete nucleotide sequence of the S1 strain of BomaNPV was determined and compared with the BmNPV T3 strain. The circular, double stranded DNA genome of the S1 strain was 126,770 nucleotides long (GenBank accession no. FJ882854), with a G+C content of 40.23%. The genome contained 133 potential ORFs. Most of the putative proteins were more than 96% identical to homologs in the BmNPV T3 strain, except for bro-a, lef-12, bro-c, and bro-d. Compared with the BmNPV T3 strain, however, this genome did not encode the bro-b and bro-e genes. In addition, hr1 lacked two repeat units, while hr2L, hr2R, hr3, hr4L, hr4R, and hr5 were similar to the corresponding hrs in the T3 strain. The sequence strongly suggested that BomaNPV and BmNPV are variants with each other, and supported the idea that baculovirus strain heterogeneity may often be caused by variation in the hrs and bro genes.