Genetic divergence with emergence of novel phenotypic variants of equine arteritis virus during persistent infection of stallions.

ABSTRACT: The persistently infected carrier stallion is the critical natural reservoir of equine arteritis virus (EAV), as venereal infection of mares frequently occurs after breeding to such stallions. Two Thoroughbred stallions that were infected during the 1984 outbreak of equine viral arteritis in central Kentucky subsequently became long-term EAV carriers. EAV genomes amplified from the semen of these two stallions were compared by sequence analysis of the six 3' open reading frames (ORFs 2 through 7), which encode the four known structural proteins and two uncharacterized glycoproteins. The major variants of the EAV population that sequentially arose within the reproductive tract of each carrier stallion varied by approximately 1% per year, and the heterogeneity of the viral quasispecies incre

SUBMITTER: Hedges JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC104142 | biostudies-literature | 1999 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature