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Review
. 2007 Jan 7;13(1):14-21.
doi: 10.3748/wjg.v13.i1.14.

Hepatitis B virus taxonomy and hepatitis B virus genotypes

Stephan Schaefer  1
Affiliations
Review

Hepatitis B virus taxonomy and hepatitis B virus genotypes

Stephan Schaefer. World J Gastroenterol. .

Abstract

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a member of the hepadnavirus family. Hepadnaviruses can be found in both mammals (orthohepadnaviruses) and birds (avihepadnaviruses). The genetic variability of HBV is very high. There are eight genotypes of HBV and three clades of HBV isolates from apes that appear to be additional genotypes of HBV. Most genotypes are now divided into subgenotypes with distinct virological and epidemiological properties. In addition, recombination among HBV genotypes increases the variability of HBV. This review summarises current knowledge of the epidemiology of genetic variability in hepadnaviruses and, due to rapid progress in the field, updates several recent reviews on HBV genotypes and subgenotypes.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogenetic tree of orthohe-padnaviruses. Complete genomes of HBV genotypes A (X02763), B (D00330), C (M12906), D (V01460), E (X75657), F (X69798), G (AF160501) and H (AY090454); HBVcpz (D00220), HBVoru (NC 002168), and HBVgbn (U46935) were aligned using clustal w with orthohepadnavirus genomes from woolly monkey (AF046996) woodchuck (J02442), ground squirrel (K02715) and the tentative member from arctic squirrel (nc_001719). The alignment was tested with the neighbour-joining method.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic tree of the genus avihepadnavirus.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Phylogenetic tree of complete HBV genomes. An alignment of 601 complete HBV sequences was performed with Clustal X in the program DNAstar. The alignment was further analysed by boot-strapping using the Neighbourhood-Joining method contained in MEGA version 3.1[104].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Geographic distribution of HBV genotypes and subgenotypes.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Schematic genome organisation of recombinants between HBV genotypes. HBV recombinants were described from materials sampled in A: Vietnam[99]; B: Tibet[68]; C: Africa[100] and D: Asia[67]. The ORF coding for the HBV proteins are shown as arrows, the inner circle represents the HBV genome.
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