Short report

Analysis of the nucleotide sequence of the guinea pig cytomegalovirus (GPCMV) genome

Mark R Schleiss¹ , Alistair McGregor¹ , K Yeon Choi¹ , Shailesh V Date² , Xiaohong Cui³ and Michael A McVoy³

¹  Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Translational Research, University of Minnesota, 2001 6th Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

²  Genentech, Inc., 1 DNA Way, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA

³  Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, P.O. Box 163, MCV Station, Richmond, VA 23298, USA

author email corresponding author email

Virology Journal 2008, 5:139doi:10.1186/1743-422X-5-139

Published:	12 November 2008

Abstract

In this report we describe the genomic sequence of guinea pig cytomegalovirus (GPCMV) assembled from a tissue culture-derived bacterial artificial chromosome clone, plasmid clones of viral restriction fragments, and direct PCR sequencing of viral DNA. The GPCMV genome is 232,678 bp, excluding the terminal repeats, and has a GC content of 55%. A total of 105 open reading frames (ORFs) of > 100 amino acids with sequence and/or positional homology to other CMV ORFs were annotated. Positional and sequence homologs of human cytomegalovirus open reading frames UL23 through UL122 were identified. Homology with other cytomegaloviruses was most prominent in the central ~60% of the genome, with divergence of sequence and lack of conserved homologs at the respective genomic termini. Of interest, the GPCMV genome was found in many cases to bear stronger phylogenetic similarity to primate CMVs than to rodent CMVs. The sequence of GPCMV should facilitate vaccine and pathogenesis studies in this model of congenital CMV infection.