Therefore, to determine if one of the parental strains and/or a recombinant sequence is present in these pools, the RT-PCR product of the E protein gene from the recombinant strain, MEX_OAX_1656_05 was cloned and analyzed (Figure 1B). We obtained 10 E protein gene clones that were studied using the RDP3 software and it was determined that the sequence of clone MEX_OAX_1656_05_C07 presents statistical evidence of recombination by GENECOV (P-Val = 7.356
× 10-7), BOOTSCAN (P-Val = 1.378 × 10-5), MAXCHI MLN2238 cost (P-Val = 1.764 × 10-3), CHIMERA (P-Val = 1.392 × 10-4) and 3SEQ (P-Val = 4.478 × 10-4). The E protein gene of said clones contains two breakpoints. The first breakpoint was located in the nucleotide 906 of the coding region for protein E; the second breakpoint was located GANT61 in the nucleotide 1047 of the same gene (Figure 5A, Figure 6). GARD analysis confirmed that this clone is recombinant displaying the first breakpoint in the nucleotide 906 and the second breakpoint in the nucleotide1047 (Figure 5B). The constructed ML trees showed that the MEX_OAX_1656_05_C07 clone clustered in the Asian/American genotype branch when the 1-905 E gene region was examined, and clustered in the American genotype when the E gene region from nucleotide 906 to1047 was analyzed (Figure 5C). Finally, when region 1048-1485 was analyzed, the clone clustered again with the Asian/American strains. Figure 5 Recombination plots of
clone MEX_OAX_165607_05 of E protein gene. A) BOOTSCAN plot resulted from the analysis of the clone MEX_OAX_165607_05 sequence with 1000 bootstrap, the putative mayor parent MEX_OAX_165617_05, and the putative minor parent MEX_95; B) Breakpoints plot obtained with GARD algorithm by using the sequences as above; C) Phylogenetic trees (E gene) based on putative recombination P-type ATPase and non-recombination regions by maximum likelihood methods. Figure 6 Alignment of recombinant E protein gene sequence MEX_OAX_165607_05 with parental sequences. Location of the breakpoints of MEX_OAX_165607_05 sequence determined
by BOOTSCAN is highlighted by (*); and the one determined by GARD is labeled by (•). The number of nucleotide is determined by the position in the sequence of E gene. The nucleotides involved in this recombinant are displayed in the alignment of the E gene region sequences of the recombinant MEX_OAX_1656_05_C07 clone, the parental clone MEX_OAX_1656_05_C17 and the strain MEX_95 (Figure 6). Discussion Mutation rate studies indicate that DENV genome averages 1 nucleotide change per cycle of virus AZD5153 datasheet replication [32] because of the lack of proofreading activity. Another means to generate genetic changes is through recombination that has been reported in different Flaviviruses, including hepatitis C virus (HCV), diarrhea bovine virus (DBV), DENV, Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), and Saint Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV) [14, 16, 21].