Warrilow David, Smith Ina L, Harrower Bruce, Smith Greg A
Queensland Health Scientific Services, Archerfield, Australia.
Virology. 2002 May 25;297(1):109-19. doi: 10.1006/viro.2002.1417.
Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV), which occurs in pteropid and insectivorous bat populations, causes a rabies-like encephalitis in infected humans. We report the first complete sequence of an ABLV isolate obtained from a human who developed symptoms 27 months after being bitten by an infected flying fox. This isolate is the smallest lyssavirus to be sequenced, with a size of 11,918 nucleotides. Analyses of previously unsequenced regions and the complete genome confirm its close relationship with classical rabies viruses. In addition, a leucine zipper-like motif, not present in the other lyssaviruses, was found in the conserved domain I of the polymerase protein. This is the first report of a lyssavirus to vary in an 11-nucleotide, strictly conserved, complementary terminal sequence. This region is thought to encode important cis-acting regulatory signals; ABLV variation indicates a greater degree of flexibility than was thought for lyssaviruses in this region. A comparison of the pteropid and insectivorous isolates of ABLV indicates considerable differences between the two viruses. If the divergence of the two occurred on the Australian mainland, ABLV may have been endemic to Australia well before European colonisation.
澳大利亚蝙蝠狂犬病毒（ABLV）存在于狐蝠和食虫蝙蝠种群中，可在受感染人类中引发类似狂犬病的脑炎。我们报告了从一名被感染的狐蝠咬伤27个月后出现症状的人类身上分离出的ABLV毒株的首个完整序列。该毒株是已测序的最小狂犬病毒，大小为11,918个核苷酸。对先前未测序区域和完整基因组的分析证实了它与经典狂犬病毒的密切关系。此外，在聚合酶蛋白的保守结构域I中发现了一个其他狂犬病毒中不存在的亮氨酸拉链样基序。这是关于狂犬病毒在一个11个核苷酸的、严格保守的互补末端序列中发生变异的首次报道。该区域被认为编码重要的顺式作用调节信号；ABLV的变异表明该区域狂犬病毒的灵活性程度比之前认为的更高。对ABLV的狐蝠和食虫蝙蝠分离株的比较表明这两种病毒之间存在相当大的差异。如果这两种病毒在澳大利亚大陆上发生分化，那么在欧洲殖民之前ABLV可能就已在澳大利亚流行。
