Cloning and sequence analysis of the N gene of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus LJB/03

The nucleocapsid (N) gene of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) strain LJB/03 which was previously isolated in Heilongjiang province, China, was cloned, sequenced and compared with published sequences of other avian and mammalian coronavirus. The nucleotide sequence encoding the entire N gene open reading frame (ORF) of LJB/03 was 1326 bases long and encoded a protein of 441 amino acids with predicted Mr of 49 kDa. It consisted of 405 adenines (30.5%), 294 cytosines (22.1%), 329 guanines (24.8%) and 298 thymines (22.5%) residues. Sequence comparison with other PEDV strains selected from GenBank revealed that the LJB/03 N gene has a high sequence homology to those of other PEDV isolates, 97.4% with JS2004, 95.6% with chinju99, 96.6% with Br1/87, and 96.8% with CV777. The encoded protein shared 96.4% amino acid identities compared with CV777, 96.1% with Brl/87, 98% with JS2004, 96.90% with chinju99, respectively. The amino acid sequence contained seven potential protein kinase C phosphorylation sites, nine Casein kinase II phosphorylation sites, one Tyrosine kinase phosphorylation site, two cAMP- and cGMP-dependent protein kinase phosphorylation sites.