Different genotypes of nephropathogenic infectious bronchitis viruses co-circulating in chicken population in China.

Chicken nephropathogenic infectious bronchitis (IB) was prevalent in the most chicken farms during recent years, although the IB vaccination program has been widely performed in China. To characterize the S1 protein of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) from China, five representative nephropathogenic IB viruses isolated from chickens in different provinces were genetically and phylogenetically analyzed. The results showed that the length of the S1 genes of the isolates were quite different (1,617, 1,620, 1,623, 1,629, and 1,632 nucleotides, respectively). The homology of the nucleotides and amino acids among the five isolates were 76.7%-92.1% and 73.9%-89.5%, respectively, indicating a great variation in S1 genes of the isolates. The variation in S1 genes might affect the antigenicity and pathogenicity of the viruses. Genetically, point mutations, insertions, and deletions in the S1 protein can be observed at many positions, especially at the first 150 amino acids in the N-terminal of the S1 protein. Two motif cleavage sites (R-R-X-R-R/S, H-R-R-R-R/S) were observed in the five sequenced strains. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that they belonged to different lineages. These findings indicated that different genotypes of nephropathogenic IB viruses were co-circulating in the chicken population in China.