Molecular epidemiology of infectious bronchitis virus isolates from China and Southeast Asia.

In order to trace the origin and evolution of avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) isolates in China and Southeast Asia, genomic sequencing was used for molecular characterization of 24 IBV isolates and two reference strains in comparison with the published sequences. The 5' region of the S1 genes, containing hypervariable regions I and II, and 3' region of the nucleocapsid genes, containing cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes, were used to construct phylogenetic trees for analysis. The results showed that the 24 isolates could be divided into three distinct groups, that is, American, Asian, and European. Some isolates formed a distinct Asian phylogenetic group, suggesting that IBV has existed for some time in Asia. Our results also showed that in vivo recombination of IBV may have occurred at a rather high frequency, contributing to the diversity of these IBV isolates. Importantly, recombination events have probably occurred between vaccine strains and field strains in the natural condition.