Cloning and Expression of the gp41 Gene from SpltMNPV Japan Strain and Analysis of Phylogeny Based on gp41 and ph gene
Abstract: The gp41 gene was cloned from Spodoptera litura multicapsid nucleopolyhedrovirus (SpltMNPV) Japan-C3 strain. This gene is 993bp long and encodes a polypeptide with a predicted molecular mass of 36.9 kDa. Analysis showed the gp41of SpltMNPV Japan-C3 strain was most closely related to that of SpltMNPV Chinese-G2 strain with 99.9% identity in nucleotide sequence and 99.9% in amino acid sequence. The phylogenetic trees based on gp4l and polyhedrin had the similar topologies. The combined tree of gp41 and polyhedrin had an identical topology as the gp41 gene. Mutation rate analysis showed the gp41 gene had a higher nucleotide substitution rate than that of the polyhedrin gene, implying that the polyhedrin gene may have a different selection constraint than the gp41 gene.