Cloning and Sequence Analysis of a Non-Structural Gene of an Aquareovirus

The nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence of genome segment 11 encoding a nonstructural protein of an aquareovirus strain SBR have been determined. Nucleotide sequence analysis showed that the genome segment 11 of SBR virus is 780 nucleotides long and contains a major open reading frame that codes for a polypeptide of 236 amino acids with a predicted molecular weight of 25,504 Da. The second reading frame of genome segment 11 was 480 nucleotides long and codes for a polypeptide of 145 with a predicted molecular weight of 15,715 Da. The genome segment 11 contains 24 nontranslated nucleotides at the 5′-end and 48 nontranslated nucleotides at the 3′-end. This gene codes for two nonstructural polypeptides NS29 and NS15. Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence of this gene with the published sequences of other members of the family Reoviridae indicated no sequence relatedness.