Amplification and Characterization of a Circovirus from Racing Pigeons in Tianjin
In this study,a Pigeon circovirus(PiCV)was detected from a diarrheic racing pigeon in Tianjin,by using PCR method.Sequence analysis of this PiCV strain revealed a genome size of 2032 bp,consisting of 5 open reading frames(ORFs)and 2 intergenic regions located at the 5'and 3'ends.Analysis of the pairwise sequences showed that this Tianjin PiCV strain shared 81.5%-97.7%genomic identity with other PiCVs from China,Australia,Japan,Poland,Belgium and Brazil.Phylogenetic analysis was performed for the full genomes of 53 references and this Tianjin strain by neighbor-joining method.As a result,these 54 PiCV strains were divided into 6 clades(A,B,C,D,E and F).The Tianjin strain was located in the clade B and was closely related to the strains from Belgium(DQ915957 and DQ915958)and China(KX108826,KX108805,KX108825,KJ704802 and KJ704806).Recombination analyses were carried out with Simplot and found that Rep ORFs contained several recombination hotspots,suggesting genetic diversity of PiCVs in China.