Sequence analysis of the fragment of the phosphoprotein gene of Polish distemper virus isolates

Summary. The nucleotide sequence analysis of the 429bp fragment of the P gene of 11 Polish field isolates of Canine distemper virus (CDV), reference strains and other virus isolates available in the GenBank was the aim of the studies. High homology between all dog strains from east-southern region of Poland and reference strains of CDV was demonstrated. It was estimated as 97–100% for CDV-OND; 96.7–99.8% for CDV-Rock; 96.7–99.8% for CDV-LED and 96.3–97.9% for A75-17. The 100% homology of the nucleotide sequence was observed between CDV Pulawy 92, CDV Pulawy 97 and the reference CDV-OND. The homology between CDV-OND and viruses isolated from the mink and ferret was estimated as 97.7% and 98.4%, respectively. Virus strains isolated from blue foxes demonstrated the highest homology to CDV-OND – equal to 97.7% for DV 79 and 99.5% for DV 92. The fox isolate from 1992 had higher level of homology to dog isolates (96.5–99.5%) than the strain isolated from the fox in 1979 (97.2–98.8%). The phylogenetic tree has two main lineages representing two separated genetic groups: I containing PDV and II containing all distemper virus strains isolated from terrestrial carnivores. CDV strains isolated from dogs from Pulawy region between 1992–1998 and from the fox (DV 92) formed the separate lineage containing also reference strains. They differed from the native isolates from the mink and ferret as well as from Japanese strains of CDV.Received October 29, 2002; accepted April 2, 2003 Published online June 11, 2003