Genome Characterization and Spaciotemporal Dispersal Analysis of Bagaza Virus Detected in Portugal, 2021
Marta Falcão, Margarida Barros, Margarida Duarte, Fábio A. Abade dos Santos, Teresa Fagulha, Margarida Henriques, Fernanda Ramos, Ana Duarte, Tiago C. Luís, Ricardo Parreira, Sílvia C. Barros
Abstract
genus, was detected for the first time in Portugal, in the heart and the brain of a red-legged partridge found dead in a hunting ground in Serpa (Alentejo region; southern Portugal). Here we report the genomic characterization of the full-length sequence of the BAGV detected (BAGV/PT/2021), including phylogenetic reconstructions and spaciotemporal analyses. Phylogenies inferred from nucleotide sequence alignments, complemented with the analysis of amino acid alignments, indicated that the BAGV strain from Portugal is closely related to BAGV strains previously detected in Spain, suggesting a common ancestor that seems to have arrived in the Iberia Peninsula in the late 1990s to early 2000s. In addition, our findings support previous observations that BAGV and Israel turkey meningoencephalitis virus (ITV) belong to the same viral species.