Computer based characterisation of Pteropus vampyrus endogenous betaretrovirus (PvEB) from bat genome project database

Abstract

Retroviruses have been associated with numerous chronic diseases such as leukemias and immunodeficiencies which harbored by diverse host range of animals. Recently, one member of bat endogenous retrovirus has been reported as the basal of gammaretrovirus. Later, a study discovered that betaretrovirus also present in diverse micro and megabats. From these recent studies, we gain our interest to further analyze one of the discoveries of betaretrovirus in Pteropus vampyrus in which we called it as Pteropus vampyrus endogenous betaretrovirus (PvEB). The size of nucleotide sequence is 8.7kb which was obtained during screening and characterization of bat genome from large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus) database genome project. It has a typical genomic organization of a retrovirus possessing all the major conserved motifs and LTR flanking the viral genes:5'-LTR-gag-dUTPase-pol-env-LTR-3'plus the presence of dUTPase which is common in al l betaretrovirus. Therefore, this discovery strengthens the current studies which extend the endogenous retrovirus from bats into betaretrovirus group.