SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS OF THE E3 REGION AND FIBER GENE OF HUMAN ADENOVIRUSGENOME TYPE 7H

Adenovirus type 7h is currently the predominant virulent genome type o f serotype 7 isolated in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay in association with severe infantile pneumonia. In order to characterize possible mol ecular determinants of pathogenicity, the nucleotide sequence of a 590 4-bp fragment (76 to 93 mu) containing the entire E3 region and the fi ber gene of Ad7h was established. The organization of the ORFs within the E3 region was similar to that reported for the prototype strains o f Ad7 and Ad3. A comparison of the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of all ORFs revealed a higher homology between Ad7h and Ad7p than bet ween Ad7h and Ad3 for 12.0K and 16.1K, whereas the 15.3K ORF and the a djacent fiber gene were strikingly more homologous to those of Ad3 (99 .5 vs 81.1% and 98.2 vs 66.6%, respectively). The equivalent to ORF 7. 7K in Ad7p was missing in Ad7h due to a deletion and a mutation affect ing the start codon (ATG --> ATT). Although the hemagglutinin of the A d7h fiber could not be characterized due to its lack of activity on mo nkey erythrocytes, our results indicate that Ad7h is an intermediate s train 7-3. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.