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Genetic Characteristics and Phylogeographic Dynamics of Echovirus

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Abstract

Echoviruses belong to the genus Enterovirus in the Picornaviridae family, forming a large group of Enterovirus B (EV-B) within the Enteroviruses. Previously, Echoviruses were classified based on the coding sequence of VP1. In this study, we performed a reliable phylogenetic classification of 277 sequences isolated from 1992 to 2019 based on the full-length genomes of Echovirus. In this report, phylogenetic, phylogeographic, recombination, and amino acid variability landscape analyses were performed to reveal the evolutional characteristics of Echovirus worldwide. Echoviruses were clustered into nine major clades, e.g., G1–G9. Phylogeographic analysis showed that branches G2–G9 were linked to common strains, while the branch G1 was only linked to G5. In contrast, strains E12, E14, and E16 clustered separately from their G3 and G7 clades respectively, and became a separate branch. In addition, we identified a total of 93 recombination events, where most of the events occurred within the VP1-VP4 coding regions. Analysis of amino acid variation showed high variability in the a positions of VP2, VP1, and VP3. This study updates the phylogenetic and phylogeographic information of Echovirus and indicates that extensive recombination and significant amino acid variation in the capsid proteins drove the emergence of new strains.

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Data Availability

The nucleotide and protein sequence data used in this study are available on the NCBI GenBank database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/).

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Four “batches” innovation project of invigorating medical through science and technology of Shanxi province for Dr. Li Xing (2023XM015), the Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province, China (20210302124187) for Dr. Yue Liu, and the Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (D21004). We thank all the persons who contributed to the collection and production of Echovirus sequences in NCBI GenBank.

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LX conceived the study. YW, PTS, and YL performed analysis. YW, PTS, and YL wrote the manuscript. PTS, YW, ANB, and LX revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Li Xing.

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Wang, Y., Shah, P.T., Liu, Y. et al. Genetic Characteristics and Phylogeographic Dynamics of Echovirus. J Microbiol. 61, 865–877 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12275-023-00078-w

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