So. Odemuyiwa et al., An outbreak of African swine fever in Nigeria: Virus isolation and molecular characterization of the VP72 gene of a first isolate from West Africa, VIRUS GENES, 20(2), 2000, pp. 139-142
The isolation of 98/ASF/NG, a strain of African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) as
sociated with a 1998 epizootic in Nigeria, is reported. This first isolate
of the virus from West Africa was identified through a successful polymeras
e chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing of a 280 base pair (bp)
fragment of the Major Capsid Protein (VP72) gene. Further amplification an
d sequence analysis of a 1.9 kilobase pair (kbp) fragment encompassing the
complete VP72 gene showed that the isolate has a 92.2%, 92.4%, and 97.2% ho
mology with previously sequenced Ugandan, Dominican Republican and Spanish
isolates respectively. Of the 50 nucleotide changes observed in this highly
conserved gene, 45 were found to result in 40 amino acid changes clustered
around the central region (position 426 to 516) of the VP 72 protein while
changes at the remaining 5 positions were silent. These changes also led t
o the loss of two out of the seven potential N-glycosylation sites which ar
e in this gene conserved among all isolates. The possible epizootiological
implications of such mutations in a highly conserved gene of a DNA virus is
discussed in relation to this outbreak.