Bioinformatics analysis of the complete nucleotide sequence of duck plague virus UL22 gene

Abstract

UL22 gene, also named gH gene(GenBank accession No. EU195089) from duck plague virus (DPV) CHv strain which was isolated in our laboratory, is a 2505bp segment. The analysis about the characteristics of this gene may improve our understanding for the evolution and classification of DPV. In this study, the structure of phylogenetic tree and the prediction of gH functional sites depended upon MegAlign procedure and some online analysis softwares. The results revealed that this gene sequence was quite conservative in DPV. The phylogenetic tree of the gH protein and its homologs of other 20 reference herpesviruses showed glycoprotein H had a close evolutionary relationship with certain avian herpesviruses, such as MeHV-1, GaHV-2 and GaHV-3 which just were classified to Mardivirus genus. Besides, 8 N-glycosylation sites and 52 potential phosphorylation sites were found in gH and they maybe play an important role in regulating the function of DPV glycoprotein H. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.