DETECTION IN CHIMPANZEES OF A NOVEL FLAVIVIRUS RELATED TO GB-VIRUS-C HEPATITIS-G VIRUS

Infection with hepatitis G virus (HGV) or GB virus-C (GBV-C) is widely distributed in human populations. Viruses related to GBV-C/HGV have b een recovered from several New World primate species, including tamari ns, owl monkeys and marmosets, To understand more about the relationsh ip between GB viruses and their hosts, we used primers from the 5' non -coding (5'NC), non-structural 3 (NS3) and NS5 regions in nested polym erase chain reactions to screen for related viruses infecting non-capt ive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, troglodytes and verus subspecies), S equences from the 5'NCR and NS5 regions were amplified from samples ta ken from 3 of 39 chimpanzees, and from one chimpanzee in the NS3 regio n. Sequence comparisons of each region revealed that the GB virus infe cting chimpanzees was distinct from both GBV-C/HGV and from any of the known GBV-A sequences, but was more closely related to human viruses. GB viruses recovered from different chimpanzees were more diverse tha n variants of GBV-C/HGV found in humans, with 25% sequence divergence in the 5'NCR and 20% (9.5% amino acid) sequence divergence in NS5 betw een variants recovered from the troglodytes and verus subspecies, comp ared with 7.4% and 10.4% (1.9% amino acid) divergence amongst GBV-C/HG V variants infecting humans. Finding GBV-C/HGV-related viruses in an O ld World monkey species suggests that OS-like viruses may be widely di stributed in simians, and suggests a close evolutionary relationship w ith their natural hosts.