Size variation within the second hypervariable region of the surface envelope gene of the bovine lentivirus BIV in experimentally and naturally infected cattle.

The bovine lentivirus also known as the bovine immunodeficiency-like virus (BIV) has conserved and hypervariable regions in the surface envelope (SU) gene. Size variation between isolates can be as large as 200 bp, mostly occurring in the second hypervariable (V2) gene region of the SU gene. The V2 region was cloned and sequenced from both experimentally and naturally infected cattle. Temporal evaluation of provirus from an experimentally inoculated cow showed two different-sized variants that appeared over time. The variation appeared to result from a recombinational event resulting in an apparent direct repeat. Cloned proviral nucleotide sequence diversity increased over time. Virus that was cultured and then cloned and sequenced showed progressive change from the inoculum virus, but culturing reduced the diversity of the clones as compared with direct amplification of provirus from leukocyte samples from the cow. The quasispecies phenomenon was evident in clones sequenced from a cow naturally infected with BIV. Of 10 clones examined from the V2 region, 6 different-size clones were present with nine different patterns of sequence rearrangement. Sequence length of different clones varied by as much as 43 amino acids (aa), with 21- and 15-aa direct repeats accounting for most of the size variation. Similar to other lentiviruses, BIV appears to mutate rapidly, which may be important in viral persistence and pathogenesis.