Fig 1.
HAdV-3 genome and hexon gene hypervariable regions.
The HAdV-3 GB strain genome is 35345 bp long (GenBank ID: AY599834). The hexon protein is a 945–amino acid (AA) polypeptide encoded by 2835 nucleotides that extends from 18,420 to 21,254 bp in the HAdV-3 genome. HVR1 to HVR6 are located in Loop 1 and HVR7 in Loop 2 of the hexon between 18,814 to 19,777 bp of the genome.
Fig 2.
(A) Pathway of designation of human adenovirus type 3 hexon variants. (B) Method of identification of new hexon variants of human adenovirus type 3. HAdV-3-human adenovirus type 3, NT-nucleotide, BLAST-basic local alignment searching tool, AA-amino acid, HVRs- hypervariable regions, 3Hv-hexon variant of adenovirus type 3.
Fig 3.
Comparison of the predicted amino acid sequences of 7 HVRs of 25 hexon variants (3Hv-1 to 3Hv-25) of HAdV-3.
The variant strains were compared with the GB strain. Because 3Hv-1 to 3Hv-4 together comprise the majority (80%) of the variants, one representative strain from each country was selected. One reprentative strain from 3Hv-5 to 3Hv-25 was selected. The AA sequences were aligned by Genetyx software (Genetyx Corporation, Tokyo). The hypervariable regions were marked manually following the description by Miksza et al. (1996). The intervening AA sequences between the HVRs were deleted after alignment. The homology of AAs with GB strains is indicated by an asterisk (*) as well as by a green or red shadow, whereas the variations are indicated by an underscore (_).
Fig 4.
Country-based distribution of HAdV-3 hexon variants.
The country is indicated by a bar and the variants are indicated by different colors shown below the lowest bar. Korea has the highest number of variants (12 variants within 25 strains). This is followed by China (9 variants within 81 strains), Taiwan (7 variants with 49 stains), Japan (5 variants within 52 strains), Germany (4 variants within 36 strains). The United States and India each have only 1 hexon variant.
Fig 5.
Worldwide distribution of 3Hv-1 to 3Hv-4.
3Hv-1 to 3Hv-4 comprise 80% of all variants distributed among 7 countries (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, the United States, and India). The values inside the brackets indicate the number of strains reported in each country.
Table 1.
Country based distribution HAdV-3 hexon variants.