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A phylogenetic study of new rabies virus strains in different regions of Iran

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Abstract

Rabies is the most critical zoonotic disease in Iran, which imposes many extra costs on health care system in each country. The present study aimed to determine the molecular characteristics of the wild circulating strains of the rabies virus (RABV) collected in Iran during 2015–2017. Rabies-suspected samples were collected from different regions of Iran and identified for RABV antigen confirmation using fluorescent antibody tests. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed on positive samples and gene sequencing was done on rabies nucleoprotein and glycoprotein genes to determine the rabies molecular characteristics. Accordingly, nine street RABVes were isolated. Then, N (802 bp) and G (735 bp) genes were amplified with specific primers using PCR. The sequence of nine strains was determined and compared with another 50 close to them, and the phylogenetic tree was plotted using neighbor-joining method by Mega 7 software. The molecular characteristic results indicated that all new strains belong to RABV wild species. As a result, the most prevalent strains of RABV in northwest, west, center, and south of Iran were identified. The present study may provide a better insight into the identification of all RABV strains, and understanding the evolutionary nature of RABV and how its hosts change in the world over the centuries.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the staff of Center for Reference and Research on Rabies who helped to collect the samples.

Funding

This work was financially supported by Grant 496 of Pasteur Institute of Iran.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Reference and Research on Rabies, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

    Fatemeh Hosseini Heydarabadi, Rouzbeh Bashar, Maryam Fazeli & Farzaneh Sheikholeslami

  2. Department of Hepatitis and AIDS, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

    Kazem Baessi

Authors
  1. Fatemeh Hosseini Heydarabadi
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  2. Kazem Baessi
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  3. Rouzbeh Bashar
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  4. Maryam Fazeli
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  5. Farzaneh Sheikholeslami
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Contributions

FH performed FAT, PCR, and Sequencing. Alignment and Phylogenetic analysis were performed by K. B.RB and MF collected the samples. FS designed the study and obtained the funding. FS and FH wrote the manuscript. The final manuscript was read and approved by all the authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Farzaneh Sheikholeslami.

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The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All animal experiments were performed in agreement with Institutional Animal Care and research Advisory Committee of Pasteur Institute of Iran.

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Edited by Zhen F. Fu.

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Hosseini Heydarabadi, F., Baessi, K., Bashar, R. et al. A phylogenetic study of new rabies virus strains in different regions of Iran. Virus Genes 56, 361–368 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11262-020-01752-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11262-020-01752-6

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