%0 Journal Article %A Liu, Dong-Ying %A Tesh, Robert B. %A Travassos da Rosa, Amelia P. A. %A Peters, Clarence J. %A Yang, Zhanqiu %A Guzman, Hilda %A Xiao, Shu-Yuan %T Phylogenetic relationships among members of the genus Phlebovirus (Bunyaviridae) based on partial M segment sequence analyses %D 2003 %J Journal of General Virology, %V 84 %N 2 %P 465-473 %@ 1465-2099 %R https://doi.org/10.1099/vir.0.18765-0 %I Microbiology Society, %X Viruses in the Phlebovirus genus of the family Bunyaviridae cause clinical syndromes ranging from a short, self-limiting febrile illness to fatal haemorrhagic fever. The genus currently consists of 68 antigenically distinct virus serotypes, most of which have not been genetically characterized. RT-PCR with four ‘cocktail’ primers was performed to amplify a region of the M segment of the genome of 24 phleboviruses included in the sandfly fever Naples, sandfly fever Sicilian and Punta Toro serocomplexes. Partial M segment sequences were successfully obtained and phylogenetic analysis was performed. The three resultant genotypic lineages were consistent with serological data. The sequence divergences were 27·6 % (nucleotide) and 25·7 % (amino acid) within the Sicilian serocomplex, 33·7 % (nucleotide) and 34·4 % (amino acid) within the Naples serocomplex and 35·6 % (nucleotide) and 37·5 % (amino acid) within the Punta Toro serocomplex. Overall, the diversities among viruses of Sicilian, Naples and Punta Toro serocomplexes were 48·2 % and 57·6 % at the nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively. This high genetic divergence may explain the difficulties in designing a consensus primer pair for the amplification of all the phleboviruses using RT-PCR. It also suggests that infection with one genotype may not completely immunize against infection with all other genotypes in a given serocomplex. These findings have implications for potential vaccine development and may help explain clinical reports of multiple episodes of sandfly fever in the same individual. %U https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/vir.0.18765-0