CLONING AND SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS OF A NONSTRUCTURAL GENE OF AN AQUAREOVIRUS

The nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence of genome segment 11 en coding a nonstructural protein of an aquareovirus strain SBR have been determined, Nucleotide sequence analysis showed that the genome segme nt 11 of SBR virus is 780 nucleotides long and contains a major open r eading frame that codes for a polypeptide of 236 amino acids with a pr edicted molecular weight of 25,504 Da. The second reading frame of gen ome segment 11 was 480 nucleotides long and codes for a polypeptide of 145 with a predicted molecular weight of 15,715 Da. The genome segmen t 11 contains 24 nontranslated nucleotides at the 5'-end and 48 nontra nslated nucleotides at the 3'-end. This gene codes for two nonstructur al polypeptides NS29 and NS15. Comparison of the deduced amino acid se quence of this gene with the published sequences of other members of t he family Reoviridae indicated no sequence relatedness.