Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2020, Vol. 51 ›› Issue (4): 801-809.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2020.04.016

• PREVENTIVE VETERINARY MEDICINE • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Phylogenetic Analysis of Four Strains of H3N2 Swine Influenza Virus Isolated from the Same Pig Farm

YU Liangzheng, DING Yangbao, HE Jianqiao, LIU Linlin, CUI Baiyang, WEI Zuzhang, OUYANG Kang, HUANG Weijian, CHEN Ying*   

  1. Laboratory of Animal Infectious Disease and Immunology, College of Animal Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China
  • Received:2019-10-21 Online:2020-04-25 Published:2020-04-21

Abstract: Pigs are regarded as a "mixing vessel" of influenza viruses, who could reassort with heterologous strains. They pose a potential threat to human health, due to the existence of the human-type (SA α-2,6-Gal) and the avian-type (SA α-2,3-Gal) receptors on the respiratory epithelial cells. Our previous study showed that two novel reassortants H3N2 swine influenza viruses(SIVs) with 2009 pandemic H1N1 internal genes were isolated in 2013 and 2014 from a large-scale pig farm of Nanning. To understand the genetic evolution of SIVs in the same pig farm, the consecutive surveillance was performed from 2018 to 2019. Two triple-reassortant H3N2 SIVs named as A/swine/Guangxi/JG13/2019 (JG13/2019) and A/swine/Guangxi/JG20/2019 (JG20/2019) were isolated once more in the pig farm mentioned above in 2019. The analysis of phylogenetic tree demonstrated that their reassortant form were similar to previous strains, A/swine/Guangxi/JGB4/2013 (JGB4/2013) and A/swine/Guangxi/JG1/2014 (JG1/2014), containing the surface genes HA and NA derived from the human-like H3N2 lineage, the internal genes NP, M, PA, PB1 and PB2 derived from the pdm09/H1N1 lineage and the NS gene derived from the classical swine H1N1 lineage. Besides, the homologies of HA and NA genes between the new isolates and previous isolates were 95.3%-97.4% and 93.9%-97.0%, respectively at the nucleotide level. The internal genes (NP, M, PA, PB1 and PB2) were 96.2%-98.1%, NS genes were 97.1%-97.6%. It was found that the protein HA still remained 190D, 226I and 228S which bind to human receptor. However, there were still two mutations at the position 223 (V→I) and 227 (P→S). Furthermore, there were two sites different from previous strains on PA protein and PB2 protein, which were R→K at the position 356 and I→T at the position 588. Whether these changes could affect the pathogenicity, replication and the ability of cross-species transmission needs to be further studied in future. After six years, H3N2 SIVs carrying internal gene fragments (PB2, PB1, PA, M and NP) of pdm/09 H1N1 and human-like surface genes (HA and NA) were still epidemic in pigs from the same farm. Although gene mutations have occurred in key functional domains, they still maintained the receptor binding characteristics to infect human. Therefore, the strength of surveillance for SIVs will provide the pre-alarm for the possible outbreak of human pandemic.

Key words: H3N2 subtype, swine influenza virus, evolutionary analysis, molecular characteristics

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