IDENTIFICATION OF 5 NOVEL HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS SEQUENCES IN THE NEW-MEXICO TRIETHNIC POPULATION

Cervical specimens obtained from previous clinical studies at the Univ ersity of New Mexico were screened for reference strain human papillom aviruses (HPVs) via HPV L1 consensus polymerase chain reaction (PCR) a nd type-specific oligonucleotide probe hybridization. PCR products tha t bound to an HPV generic probe but did not hybridize with HPV type-sp ecific oligonucleotide probes were subjected to restriction endonuclea se digestion analyses. Resulting restriction fragment length polymorph isms served as the basis for initial grouping of unknown HPVs and iden tification of potential reference strain HPV variants. MY09/MY11 PCR p roducts containing putative novel HPV L1 fragments were cloned and seq uenced. Five novel HPV sequences were identified in this study.