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Virol Res J 2017 Volume 1 Issue 3
International Virology Conference
October 30-31, 2017 | Toronto, Canada
A new look at an old virus: Phylogenetic relationship between an Aleutian mink disease virus from
Nova Scotia and global strains
P P Rupasinghe
and
A H Farid
Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture, Canada
I
nfection with Aleutian mink disease virus (AMDV) causes
economic losses to the multi-million-dollar mink industry in
Nova Scotia (NS). There is no cure or vaccine for the disease and
culling seropositiveanimals has not beeneffective inpermanent
eradication of the virus frommany farms inNS. It is important to
identify the sources of persistent infection or re-contamination
of mink farms to develop strategies for controlling the virus.
Sequencing of viruses on a farm, and comparing the sequences
with existing sequence databases, is the onlyway to identify the
source of contamination. The objective of this study was to find
the phylogenetic relationship between one AMDV isolate from
Cape Breton Island, NS (NS-CB), which has not been sequenced
before, and the global strains. The NS-CB isolate originated
from a farm which has been infected by AMDV for over 40
years. DNA was extracted from the spleen of one randomly
selected mink from this farm. The entire coding region of
the virus, from nucleotides 206 to 4349, was amplified by
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced by the Sanger
sequencing method. NS-CB was compared with 14 global
AMDV strains from North America, Europe and Asia, available
on Genbank, which had the same sizes as the NS-CB isolate.
Pairwise sequence identities were calculated by the Sequence
Demarcating Tool (SDT) software, multiple sequence alignment
was performedusingMuscleprogramandphylogenetic analysis
was performed by Mega7. The NS-CB isolate was the closest to
the non-pathogenic AMDV-G, moderately pathogenic SL-3 from
Germany and highly pathogenic Utah strain from USA. The four
Chinese and four Newfoundland isolates were classified into
different branches. It was concluded that the NS-CB isolate is
different from the Newfoundland isolates, although they are
the closest geographically, and that its pathogenicity could not
be predicted from the nucleotide sequence of its entire coding
region.
Speaker Biography
P P Rupasinghe has completed her BSc at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
majoring Biology and Chemistry. After moving to Canada, she worked as a Research
Assistant at the University of Guelph. During that time she has completed Certificate
in Food Science Program of the University of Guelph. She has co-authored four
peers-reviewed publications. Currently, she is a part-time Master’s student and
Research Assistant at Molecular Microbiology laboratory at Dalhousie University.
e:
prupasinghe@Dal.Ca