NUCLEOTIDE-SEQUENCE OF A CANINE ORAL PAPILLOMAVIRUS CONTAINING A LONGNONCODING REGION

The DNA genome of a canine oral papillomavirus (COPV) was completely s equenced and found to consist of 8607 base pairs, which were the longe st of all known papillomaviruses (PVs). Its organization was similar t o that of other PVs except that it lacked early gene 5 (E5) and posses sed a unique long noncoding region (L-NCR) between the end of the earl y genes and the beginning of the late genes. COPV also possessed a sho rt noncoding region (S-NCR) which contained a putative upper regulator y region (URR), which is commonly found in PVs. The L-NCR did not show any similarity to known PV DNAs nor other DNA sequences in the GenBan k database. Nucleotide sequence analysis of COPV showed that it was cl osely related to human papillomavirus type 1 (HPV 1) and animal PVs as sociated with cutaneous lesions in rabbit, European elk, deer and cow as we reported previously.