Computational analysis identifies human adenovirus type 55 as a re-emergent acute respiratory disease pathogen

Abstract

Novel human adenoviruses (HAdVs) arise from genome recombination. Analysis of HAdV type 55 from an outbreak in China shows a hexon recombination between HAdV-B11 and HAdV-B14, resulting in a genome that is 97.4% HAdV-B14. Sporadic appearances as a re-emergent pathogen and misidentification as "HAdV-B11a" are due to this partial hexon.

FIG. 1.

(A) Bootscan recombination analysis of the HAdV-B55 genome. The dark green reflects HAdV-B14, and the red indicates HAdV-B11 sequences. Parameters are as follows: 1,000-bp window; 200-bp step; 100 repetitions; neighbor-joining algorithm. The HAdV types analyzed and the colors are the same for both panels A and B, in descending order: HAdV-B14 (top; dark green), B11, B35, B34, B3, B7, B16, B21, B50, simian adenovirus (SAdV)-B21, A12, F40, F41, D53, D9, SAdV-E25, E4, C5, C2, G52, and SAdV-G1 (bottom; light green). (B) Fine-resolution analysis of the partial hexon gene recombination. Bootscan analysis of the hexon gene shows that the proximal region, containing HVR1-6 (“Loop 1”; 407 to 1,034 nucleotide gene location) and HVR7 (“Loop 2”; 1,363 to 1,484 nucleotide gene location), derives from HAdV-B11. The distal portion derives from HAdV-B14, as does the rest of the genome. Parameters are as follows: 200-bp window; 20-bp step; 100 repetitions; neighbor-joining algorithm. (C) Comparative genomics. zPicture compares the nucleotide sequences of pairs of genomes by using a moving overlapping window and scoring percent identities. The y axis is set between 90 and 100%, indicating a very high level of identity.