Establishment of a phylogenetic survey system for... : AIDS (original) (raw)

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Miura, Tomoyuki; Sakuragi, Jun-ichi; Kawamura, Meiko; Fukasawa, Masashi; Moriyama, Etsuko N.; Gojobori, Takashi; Ishikawa, Koh-ichi; Mingle, Julius A.A.; Nettey, Victor B.A.; Akari, Hirofumi; Enami, Masayoshi; Tsujimoto, Hajime; Hayami, Masanori

Research Center for Immunodeficiency Virus, Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Department of Evolutionary Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Shizuoka, Department of Biology, Yamanashi Institute for Public Health, Yamanashi, Japan, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana, St. Joseph Hospital, Koforidua, Ghana, Department of Measles Virus, National Institute of Health, and “Department of Veterinary Internal Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

We designed a universal primer (UNIPOL) for DNA amplification of AIDS-related viruses. The phylogenetic tree constructed from the presumed sequences amplified with UNIPOL was representative of the tree calculated from whole pol gene sequences so far reported. UNIPOL was able to amplify the sequences of all four major groups of primate lentiviruses and also that of a distinct virus from a Ghanaian patient with an AIDS-related complex, designated GH-2. This strain scarcely hybridizes with known HIV/simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) DNA probes. Sequence analysis of the only amplified fragment revealed rapidly that GH-2 was quite similar to the recently reported HIV-2ALT(D205) and that these two viruses form a new subgroup distinct from known HIV-2 and SIVmac/SIVsm in the large HIV-2 group. This system will be useful for further phylogenetic study of various primate lentiviruses.

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