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The importance of recombination in the evolution and genetic diversity of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is currently uncertain. Only a small number of intergenotypic recombinants have been identified so far, and each has core and envelope genes classified as belonging to genotype 2. Here, we investigated two putative genotype 4/1 recombinants from southern Cameroon using a number of approaches, including standard Sanger sequencing, genotype-specific PCR amplification, and non-HCV-specific Illumina RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). Recombination between genotypes 1 and 4 was confirmed in both samples, and the parental lineages of each recombinant belong to HCV subtypes that are cocirculating at a high prevalence in Cameroon. Using the RNA-seq approach, we obtained a complete genome for one sample, which contained a recombination breakpoint at the E2/P7 gene junction. We developed and applied a new method, called Deep SimPlot, which can be used to visualize and identify viral recombination directly from the short sequence reads created by next-generation sequencing in conjunction with a consensus sequence.

Original publication

DOI

10.1128/JCM.00483-15

Type

Journal article

Journal

J Clin Microbiol

Publication Date

10/2015

Volume

53

Pages

3155 - 3164

Keywords

Aged, Cameroon, Cluster Analysis, Female, Genotype, Hepacivirus, Hepatitis C, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Molecular Sequence Data, Phylogeny, Recombination, Genetic, Sequence Analysis, DNA