Hyphantria cunea Nucleopolyhedrovirus, a Novel Baculovirus Isolated from Fall Webworm in Korea

To elucidate the novelty of Hyphantria cunea nucleopolyhedrovirus (HcNPV) isolated in Korea, polyhedron and inhibitor of apoptosis (iap) gene structures were determined and analyzed. The analysis of HcNPV polyhedrin showed a little difference with 97.6% at the nucleotide level but no difference at the amino acid level when compared with that of previously reported H. cunea NPV (HycuNPV). On the other hand, iap genes showed variable differences with 89.0-99.6% nucleotide and 90.0-99.6% amino acid sequence identities. Especially, the 5` and 3` non-coding flanking sequences of iap1 gene had lower degree of identity with those of HycuNPV. Although the phylogenetic analyses using polyhedrin and iap genes showed that HcNPV is closely related with HycuNPV, we could provide that HcNPV is a novel isolate having novel gene structures.