Journal article

Evidence of widespread natural recombination among field isolates of equine herpesvirus 4 but not among field isolates of equine herpesvirus 1

PK Vaz, J Horsington, CA Hartley, GF Browning, NP Ficorilli, MJ Studdert, JR Gilkerson, JM Devlin

Journal of General Virology | Published : 2016

Abstract

Recombination in alphaherpesviruses allows evolution to occur in viruses that have an otherwise stable DNA genome with a low rate of nucleotide substitution. High-throughput sequencing of complete viral genomes has recently allowed natural (field) recombination to be studied in a number of different alphaherpesviruses, however, such studies have not been applied to equine herpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) or equine herpesvirus 4 (EHV-4). These two equine alphaherpesviruses are genetically similar, but differ in their pathogenesis and epidemiology. Both cause economically significant disease in horse populations worldwide. This study used highthroughput sequencing to determine the full genome sequences o..

View full abstract