Phylogenic analysis of serotype Asia1 foot-and-mouth disease virus from Sulaimani/Iraq using VP1 protein: heterogeneity with vaccine strain As1/Shamir/89

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) serotypes O, A and Asia1 are responsible for a significant number of disease outbreaks in Iraq. The current study can be considered as the first molecular characterization of serotype Asia1 in Iraq. The present investigation reports the detection of serotype FMDV Asia1 from local farms in Sulaimani districts in 2012 and 2014 outbreaks. Phylogenetic analysis of the complete VP1 gene has shown that FMDV Asia1 field isolates were under genetic novel variant Sindh-08 (group VII) including PAK/iso/11 and TUR/13 strains. The VP1 protein sequence of circulatory FMDV Asia1 genotype showed heterogeneity of nine amino acid substitutions within the G-H loop with the vaccine strain As1/Shamir/89 (JF739177) that is currently used in vaccination program in Iraq. Our result indicated that differences in VP1 protein at G-H loop of the locally circulated FMDV serotype Asia1 strain may be a reason for current vaccination failure.

Keywords: Molecular genotyping; Phylogenetic analysis; viral evolution.

Fig. 1

Two fields isolate sequences alignment with three vaccines reference. Multiple sequences alignment of the amino acid of residue at G-H loop (133-160) of VP1 region two fields isolates FMD type Asia1 with currently available vaccine strain (Shamir89), Ind/97, and TAJ/64

Fig. 2

Neighbor-joining (NJ) phylogenetic tree generated using the nucleotide sequences for the complete VP1 coding regions of serotype Asia1 FMDVs