Comparative genomic sequence analysis of Chinese orf virus strain NA1/11 with other parapoxviruses

Orf virus (ORFV) is a typical member of the genus Parapoxvirus. The parapoxvirus genome consists of highly variable terminal regions and relatively conserved central regions with a high G + C content. In our previous study, a novel ORFV strain, NA1/11, was isolated from northeastern China. To fully characterize this strain, we sequenced the entire genome of NA1/11 and conducted a comparative analysis using multiple parapoxviruses. The genomic sequence of NA1/11 was found to consist of 137,080 nucleotides with a G + C content of 63.6 %, but it did not contain the terminal hairpin sequence. Alignment of ORFs from NA1/11 with NZ2, IA82 and SA00 revealed several highly variable ORFs, while the most evident ones are ORFs 001, 103, 109–110, 116 and 132. An odd phenomenon in the region of ORFs 118–120 is that the non-coding fragments are almost as long as the coding fragments. By comparative analysis of inverted terminal repeats, we identified one repeat motif and a long conserved fragment. By comparing the ITRs of SA00 with those of three other ORFVs, more clues were obtained about the correlation between ITR sequence and host adaption. Comparison of the NA1/11 genome with the sequences of other strains of ORFV revealed highly variable regions, thus providing new insights into the genetic diversity of ORFV.