Research Article | Animal Biotechnology

Comparative in silico Studies and Phylogenetic Characterization of Canine Distemper Virus of Indian Origin

College of Animal Biotechnology, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab.

Abstract

Canine distemper, caused by Morbillivirus is one of the lethal diseases of canines resulting in high mortality. Present study was undertaken to characterize Indian field strains of Canine distemper virus (CDV) based on haemagglutinin (H) and fusion protein (F) genes in silico. A total thirty one sequences of H gene and thirty four sequences of F gene available in online database were retrieved. These sequences were aligned and phylogeny was analyzed. In the present study, the Tamura (T98) + Invariant (I) model and the Tamura (T92) + Gamma (G) model were found to be the best evolutionary models for phylogenetic characterization of CDV based on H and F genes, respectively. The genetic differences of H and F genes of Indian sequences were observed from other strains of European and American origin as well as one of the commercially available vaccine strains. The study further necessitates for screening of prevailing CDV strains to look into the genomic variations in other genes.

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