SECONDARY STRUCTURE OF THE 5'-NONCODING REGION OF BORDER - DISEASE VIRUS GENOME RNAS

The computer predicted secondary structures from the 5'-NC genome regi on of four border disease virus (BDV) strains collected from sheep in England and Scotland over a period 1976-1986 were prepared. The FOLD p rogram from GCG sequence analysis software package was used for the an alysis of a 243 bp RNA fragment. Two typical shapes of secondary struc tures were observed which contained multiple imperfect stem-loop motif s. The shape of those structures exactly fit with the grouping of BDV strains to two phylogenetic groups. Secondary structures are typical o nly of BDV strains and they are different from the structures prepared for NADL (BVDV) and Alfort (CSFV) strains.