Abstract
AbstractTo screen primate hepatitis B virus (HBV), the sera of fifteen gibbons, six orangutans, and thirty-five Taiwan-macaques supported from Recourse Center for Endanger Wild Animal, Pintung Technology University were tested by using ELISA. The human sera were used as the control. ten tested positive sera from gibbons were used as the template to amplify subgenome and complete genome of HBV by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The PCR products were analyzed by nucleotide sequencing. The complete gibbon HBV genomes has 3,182 nucleotides and encode polymerase, surface protein, core protein and X-protein, which is similar to mammalian HBV in gene organization. The sequences comparison analysis showed that the sequences similarity of viral sub-genomic sequences including pre C, Core, S regions, respectively, are over 88﹪in nucleotide sequence and over 84﹪in protein sequence. These data indicated that the new isolated gibbon HBV is a “gibbon–specific” genotype of HBV. The complete genome sequences has approximately 10﹪nucleotide divergence compared to other giHBV sequences. This suggested that new isolates of gibbon HBV were new genotype (Okamoto et al. 1988, Norder et al.1992, Magnius et al. 1995). Phylogenetic analysis also revealed the sequences between new isolated gibbon HBV and published gibbon HBV are very similar. Furthermore, new isolated gibbon HBV are more related to orangutan HBV and chimpanzee HBV, and they are less close evolutionary relationship with human HBV and Duck HBV. In this report, new primate hepatitis B virus from gibbon has been isolated and characterized. This provides a new opportunity for construction of new experimental animal model for HBV research.