Detection of porcine rotavirus type G9 and of a mixture of types G1 and G5 associated with Wa-like VP4 specificity: evidence for natural human-porcine genetic reassortment

Abstract

Rotavirus type G5 is a primarily porcine pathogen that has caused frequent and widespread diarrhea in children in Brazil and in piglets elsewhere. Initial results on the rotavirus types circulating in diarrheic piglets in Brazil disclosed a high diversity of strains with distinct G types including G1, G4, G5, and G9 and the novelty of P[8], the predominant human P specificity type. Those results add strong evidence for the emergence of new strains through natural reassortment between rotaviruses of human and porcine origins.

FIG. 1

PAGE of eight porcine fecal specimens obtained in Paraná, Brazil. L1 and L2 are reference group A human rotavirus strains with short and long electropherotypes, respectively.

FIG. 2

Phylogenetic analysis of the partial gene 4 sequences of porcine rotavirus strains S8, Gottfried, and OSU and the human strain Wa. The cDNA generated in the reverse transcription-PCR amplification of a portion of gene 4 of the isolate S8 was sequenced (12), and a dendrogram was constructed by the Clustal method.