Comparative Genomic Analysis of Duck Enteritis Virus Strains

The icosahedral virion of duck enteritis virus (DEV) is roughly spherical and approximately 150 nm in diameter. Here, we de-scribe the genomic features of DEV CHv together with a draft genome sequence and its annotation, highlighting the homogene-ity and heterogeneity of this genome in comparison with its reference genomes. Duck enteritis virus (DEV) is an epornitic agent. It causes con-siderable economic losses to the commercial duck industry and poses a continuous threat to wild and migratory waterfowl populations (20). Many DEV genes have been published in mo-lecular biology studies (1, 3–18, 21, 22, 23, 25–35). However, re-search into DEV still lags relatively far behind that of other mem-bers of herpesvirus due to the limited genomic information. The construction of DEV libraries and the sequencing of the DEV genome were performed as previously described (2). There are three complete genomic sequences of DEV strains available in GenBank: the attenuate vaccine (VAC), the European virulent strain (2085), and the Chinese virulent DEV strain (DEV CHv) (24). Here, we report the comparative analysis of the DEV ge