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High genetic diversity and recombination events of porcine astrovirus strains identified from ill and asymptomatic pigs in 2017, Hunan Province, China

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Abstract

Astroviruses (AstV) are associated with enteric and systemic disease in mammals and birds. Astroviruses have received increased attention recently as they have been found to be associated with sporadic neurologic disease in mammals including humans. In pigs, porcine astrovirus (PoAstV) can be widely detected and has been grouped in five genotypes (PoAstV1 to PoAstV5). In the present study, we detected multiple PoAstVs in serum samples, nasal swabs, and fecal swabs collected from pigs suffering from respiratory disease or diarrhea but also from asymptomatic pigs, indicating a wide tissue tropism of the identified PoAstV genotypes. Coinfection of different genotypes in the same pig was commonly observed, and within an individual pig a high genetic diversity was observed for viruses belonging to the same PoAstV genotype. Two complete genomes of PoAstV2-WG-R2/2017 and PoAstV4-WG-R2/2017 were successfully obtained and characterized, with genome sizes of 6396 and 6643 nucleotides, respectively. The PoAstV2-WG-R2/2017 genome showed identities of 67.2–77.4% to other known PoAstV2 genomes, and the PoAstV4-WG-R2/2017 genome showed identities of 72.8–80.5% to other known PoAstV4 genomes. The predicted spike domain of open reading frame 2 (ORF2) of these strains showed the highest genetic heterogeneity, with amino acid identities of 13.7–70.9% for PoAstV2-WG-R2/2017 to other known PoAstV2 strains, and identities of 24.4–63.3% for the PoAstV4-WG-R2/2017 to other known PoAstV4 strains. Possible recombination events were identified in each of the two sequences. Two subclades of PoAstV2 and three subclades of PoAstV4 were defined in the present analyses. The obtained data provide further evidence for extraintestinal infectivity of PoAstVs, and confirmed the high genetic diversity of PoAstVs and the coinfection potential of different PoAstV types in a single pig.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Can Liu and Xiao-Ke Xu for assistance in collecting the samples.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFD0500104) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan province, China (Grant No. 2017JJ2043).

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Author notes

  1. Sun-Liang Lv and Hui-Hui Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Pathogen Biology and Immunology, College of Biology, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Sun-Liang Lv, Hui-Hui Zhang, Jie-Yu Li, Wen-Qin Hu, Ya-Ting Song & Chao-Ting Xiao

  2. The Roslin Institute and The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, UK

    Tanja Opriessnig

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  1. Sun-Liang Lv
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Contributions

CTX conceived and designed the study. SLL, HHZ, JYL, WQH, and YTS performed the experiments, SLL and CTX analyzed the data. SLL and CTX wrote the manuscript, and all authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chao-Ting Xiao.

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Field samples used in this study were collected as part of routine health surveillance. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Edited by Takeshi Noda.

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Lv, SL., Zhang, HH., Li, JY. et al. High genetic diversity and recombination events of porcine astrovirus strains identified from ill and asymptomatic pigs in 2017, Hunan Province, China. Virus Genes 55, 673–681 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11262-019-01692-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11262-019-01692-w

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