Liao ning virus in China

BACKGROUND: Liao ning virus is in the genus Seadornavirus within the family Reoviridae and has a genome composed of 12 segments of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). It is transmitted by mosquitoes and only isolated in China to date and it is the only species within the genus Seadornavirus which was reported to have been propagated in mammalian cell lines. In the study, we report 41 new isolates from northern and southern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in China and describe the phylogenetic relationships among all 46 Chinese LNV isolates. FINDINGS: The phylogenetic analysis indicated that all the isolates evaluated in this study can be divided into 3 different groups that appear to be related to geographic origin based on partial nucleotide sequence of the 10th segment which is predicted to encode outer coat proteins of LNV. Bayesian coalescent analysis estimated the date of the most recent common ancestor for the current Chinese LNV isolates to be 318 (with a 95% confidence interval of 30-719) and the estimated evolutionary rates is 1.993 × 10(-3 )substitutions per site per year. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that LNV may be an emerging virus at a stage that evaluated rapidly and has been widely distributed in the north part of China.