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HEPATITIS B VIRUS SUBGENOTYPE A1: EVOLUTIONARY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BRAZILIAN, AFRICAN AND ASIAN ISOLATES
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Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
University of the Witwatersrand. Faculty of Health Sciences. School of Clinical Medicine. Department of Internal Medicine. Hepatitis Virus Diversity Research Programme. Johannesburg, South Africa.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
University of the Witwatersrand. Faculty of Health Sciences. School of Clinical Medicine. Department of Internal Medicine. Hepatitis Virus Diversity Research Programme. Johannesburg, South Africa.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Virologia Molecular. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Abstract
Brazil is a country of low hepatitis B virus (HBV) endemicity in which the genotype A of HBV (HBV/A) is the most prevalent.
The complete nucleotide sequences of 26 HBV/A isolates, originating from eight Brazilian states, were determined. All were
adw2. Twenty-three belonged to subgenotype A1 and three to A2. By phylogenetic analysis, it was shown that all the 23
HBV/A1 isolates clustered together with isolates from Bangladesh, India, Japan, Nepal, the Philippines and United Arab
Emirates, but not with those of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Four amino
acid residues in the polymerase (His138 in the terminal protein domain, Pro18 and His90 in the spacer, and Ser109 in the
reverse transcriptase), and one (Phe17) in the precore region, predominated in Latin American and Asian HBV/A1 isolates,
but were rarely encountered in African isolates, with the exception of those from Somalia. Specific variations of two
adjacent amino acids in the C-terminal domain of the HBx protein, namely Ala146 and Pro147, were found in all the
Brazilian, but rarely in the other HBV/A1 isolates. By Bayesian analysis, the existence of an ‘Asian-American’ clade within
subgenotype A1 was supported by a posterior probability value of 0.996. The close relatedness of the Brazilian, Asian and
Somalian isolates suggests that the HBV/A1 strains predominant in Brazil did not originate from the five million slaves who
were imported from Central and Western Africa from 1551 to 1840, but rather from the 300–400,000 captives forcibly
removed from southeast Africa at the middle of the 19th century.
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