Exp Mol Med.  1998 Jun;30(2):101-107.

Molecular biological characterization of enterovirus variant isolated from patients with aseptic meningitis

• Jung YT
• Kim GR
• Paik SY

Abstract

In Korea, there was a big outbreak of aseptic meningitis in 1993. Six clinical isolates of enterovirus were obtained from patients with aseptic meningitis and were identified as echovirus type 9 by serotyping with a pool of neutralizing antisera. For molecular characterization of the isolates, the nucleotide sequences of 5'-noncoding region (NCR), VP4, VP2, VP1, 2A and 2C regions of the isolates were compared with the corresponding regions of echovirus type 9 Hill and Barty strains. Unlike Hill strain, Barty strain contained a C-terminal extension to the capsid protein VP1 with an RGD (argnine-glycine-aspartic acid) motif. To determine whether similar structural features were present in our isolates, their nucleotide sequences including the VP1 region were analyzed. All isolates exhibited the VP1 extension with the RGD motif. We concluded the Korean isolates in the year of 1993 as the echovirus type 9 Barty strain although the isolates showed 15-20% nucleotide sequence differences in the several genomic regions.

Keyword

Aseptic Meningitis; enterovirus; RT-PCR; RFLP assay

MeSH Terms

5' Untranslated Regions
Base Sequence
Capsid/genetics
Comparative Study
Cysteine Endopeptidases/genetics
Echovirus 9/genetics*
Genome, Viral
Human
Meningitis, Aseptic/virology*
Molecular Sequence Data
RNA Helicases/genetics
Variation (Genetics)*