DOBRAVA VIRUS AS A NEW HANTAVIRUS - EVIDENCED BY COMPARATIVE SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS

Dobrava virus, recently isolated from a yellow-neck mouse (Apodemus flavicollis), captured in a northern Slovenian village where severe cases of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome were recognized, was shown by serology and restriction enzyme digestion of PCR-amplified gene segments to be related to previously recognized hantaviruses. To investigate further the relationship of this new isolate to other hantaviruses, a portion of the medium (M) genome segment of Dobrava virus was amplified by PCR and the nucleotide sequence determined. Comparing the nucleotide sequence with the same gene region of other hantaviruses revealed an overall homology of 41.7%. A phylogenetic tree based on pairwise sequence similarity clearly showed that Dobrava virus is genetically distinct, and probably represents a new virus in the genus Hantavirus of the family Bunyaviridae.