Similarity of the VP4 protein of human rotavirus strain 116E to that of the bovine B223 strain

Rotavirus strain 116E was isolated from the fecal specimen of a newborn infant from New Delhi who had no symptoms of diarrhea. The strain could not be P typed using the PCR method recently developed in our laboratory so we have sequenced the 4th gene segment that encodes the VP4 protein using viral transcript RNA prepared in vitro. This gene is 2353 base pairs in length and codes for a protein 772 amino acids long which begins with a methionine initiation codon at nucleotides 11 to 13 and ends with a single termination codon at nucleotides 2327 to 2329. Northern blot analysis demonstrates that the VP4 protein of this strain is encoded by genome segment 4. This gene is closely related to the VP4 gene of the bovine B223 strain (P type 11) at both the nucleotide (90.8% identity) and amino acid (92.2% identity) levels, but is unique from those of strains from P types 1 to 10. The close relatedness of the VP4 proteins of strains 116E and B223 is demonstrated by the amino acid composition of the potential trypsin cleavage sites and their flanking sequences, the size of the cleavage fragments, and conservation of most cysteine and proline residues. Comparative amino acid analyses of the variable regions thought to be important in VP4 antigenicity are consistent with the hypothesis that strain 116E may represent the first reported human P type 11 strain