Genetic diversity and phylogeographic dynamics of avihepadnavirus: a comprehensive full-length genomic view

Muhammad Sikandar; Pir Tariq Shah; Li Xing

doi:10.3389/fvets.2024.1385033

Genetic diversity and phylogeographic dynamics of avihepadnavirus: a comprehensive full-length genomic view

Front Vet Sci. 2024 May 2:11:1385033. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2024.1385033. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Muhammad Sikandar^#¹, Pir Tariq Shah^#^{2

3}, Li Xing^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.
² Faculty of Medicine, School of Biomedical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China.
³ Shandong Laboratory of Yantai Drug Discovery, Bohai Rim Advanced Research Institute for Drug Discovery, Yantai, China.
⁴ Shanxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Cell Biology, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Avihepadnavirus is a genus of the Hepadnaviridae family. It primarily infects birds, including species of duck, geese, cranes, storks, and herons etc. To understand the genetic relatedness and evolutionary diversity among avihepadnavirus strains, a comprehensive analysis of the available 136 full-length viral genomes (n = 136) was conducted. The genomes were classified into two major genotypes, i.e., GI and GII. GI viruses were further classified into 8 sub-genotypes including DHBV-I (duck hepatitis B virus-I), DHBV-II (Snow goose Hepatitis B, SGHBV), DHBV-III, RGHBV (rossgoose hepatitis B virus), CHBV (crane hepatitis B virus), THBV (Tinamou hepatitis B virus), STHBV (stork hepatitis B virus), and HHBV (Heron hepatitis B virus). DHBV-I contains two sub-clades DHBV-Ia and DHBV-Ib. Parrot hepatitis B virus (PHBV) stains fall into GII which appeared as a separate phylogenetic branch/clade. All the subtypes of viruses in GI and GII seem to be genetically connected with viruses of DHBV-I by multiple mutational steps in phylogeographic analysis. Furthermore, 16 potential recombination events among different sub-genotypes in GI and one in GII were identified, but none of which is inter-genotypic between GI and GII. Overall, the results provide a whole picture of the genetic relatedness of avihepadnavirus strains, which may assist in the surveillance of virus spreading.

Keywords: avihepadnavirus; genetic evolution; phylogenetic; phylogeographic; recombination.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was funded by four batches innovation project of invigorating medical through science and technology of Shanxi province (2023XM015); The Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (D21004).