MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION AND THE IN VIVO ESTIMATION OF MUTATION RATE OF THE ALEUTIAN MINK DISEASE VIRUS ISOLATE FROM CAPE BRETON, NOVA SCOTIA

Abstract

The sequence of 91.6% (4397 bp) of the genome of one Aleutian mink disease virus from Cape Breton (NS-CB) was determined. The comparison of the NS-CB with global strains revealed 10 hypervariable regions at the nucleotide level, of which five were novel. Eleven recombination events were detected between the NS-CB and 31 global strains, and phylogenetic analysis of the NS-CB and 23 global strains with no recombination revealed that than NS-CB was closely related to 19 Danish strains. Twenty mink which were inoculated with the NS-CB were sampled after 16 and 176 weeks post-inoculation (wpi) and NS-CB descendants were sequenced. The number of nucleotide substitutions at 176 wpi was greater than that at 16 wpi (113 vs 36) whereas the estimate of mutation rate at 176 wpi was lower than that at 16 wpi (2.85×10-3 vs 9.13×10-4 substitutions/site/year), showing a decreasing trend in mutation rate per unit of time.