Hepatitis E virus genotype 3 diversity, France

Abstract

We characterized 42 hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotype 3 strains from infected patients in France in 3 parts of the genome and sequenced the full-length HEV genotype 3f genome found in Europe. These strains are closely related to swine strains in Europe, which suggests zoonotic transmission of HEV in France.

Figure 1

Phylogenetic relationship among hepatitis E virus (HEV) strains from southwestern France and reference strains available in GenBank based on a 348-nt sequence in the open reading frame 2 (A) and on a 383-nt sequence of HEV RNA–dependent RNA polymerase (B). Genetic distances were calculated by using the Kimura 2-parameter method; phylogenetic trees were plotted by the neighbor-joining method. The reproducibility of the branching pattern was tested by bootstrap analysis (1,000 replicates). Each branch was labeled with the GenBank accession number of the strain, the geographic area, and the host, if nonhuman, and the geographic area where the sequence was isolated. The genotype and subtype were identified according to Lu et al. (3). Scale bars represent nucleotide substitutions per site. Boldface indicates the G3 French strains.

Figure 2

Phylogenetic relationship among hepatitis E virus (HEV) strains from southwestern France based on a 345-nt sequence of HEV hypervariable region (A) and on the full-length sequence of TLS25 and HEV strains whose entire sequence is known (B). Genetic distances were calculated by using the Kimura 2-parameter method; phylogenetic trees were plotted by the neighbor-joining method. The reproducibility of the branching pattern was tested by bootstrap analysis (1,000 replicates). Each branch was labeled with the GenBank accession number of the strain, the geographic area, and the host, if nonhuman, and the geographic area where the sequence was isolated. The genotype and subtype were identified according to Lu et al. (3). Scale bars represent nucleotide substitutions per site. Boldface indicates the G3 French strains.