Comparative analyses of the 9 glycoprotein genes found in wild-type and vaccine strains of varicella-zoster virus.

The complete DNA sequences of wild-type and vaccine strains of varicella-zoster virus have been published and listed in GenBank. In this comparative genomic analysis, the sequences of the 9 glycoprotein open reading frames (ORFs) were compared. They included gE (ORF68), gI (ORF 67), gC (ORF14), gH (ORF37), gL (ORF60), gB (ORF31), gK (ORF5), gM (ORF50), and gN (ORF8 or ORF9A). After realignment on the basis of newer data, the corrected gB sequence was lengthened to include 931 residues. The data showed that there were glycoprotein polymorphisms that differentiated North American/European strains from Japanese strains-for example, an additional ATG codon in the gL of all Oka strains. Also, there were a small number of coding single-nucleotide polymorphisms present only in glycoproteins of vaccine strains. Because these changes were highly conserved, the structure of the glycoprotein was unlikely to be altered.