GenOMIC AND Phylogenetic analysis of TWO Guinea Pig Adenovirus STRAINS RECOVERED from archival LUNG tissue.

Abstract Next generation sequencing was used to determine the whole genome sequence for two different strains of guinea pig adenovirus (GPAdV) detected in association with outbreaks of pneumonia in Australia in 1996, and in Germany in 1997 using total DNA extracted from infected archival frozen lung tissue as a template. The length of the determined genomic sequences was 37,031 bp and 37,070 bp, respectively. The nucleotide composition showed a relatively high content of guanine + cytosine (G + C) of 62%. The 99.6% nucleotide identity between the two sequenced viruses suggests that they may represent variants of the same genotype. The GPAdV genome exhibits the genomic features of a typical mastadenovirus with at least 32 open reading frames identified. Five novel open reading frames were found at the right end of the genomic sequence. One of them maps to the predicted E3 region and encodes a putative CR1 protein, two map to the E4 region, and two map to the l strand of L1 and L3, respectively. Our phylogenetic analysis of whole genome sequences showed that among the mammalian AdV species described to date, GPAdV is most closely related to MAdV-2 The characterization of this mastadenovirus species offers an opportunity to develop a new small animal model to study mammalian adenovirus pathogenesis.