Abstract

Hassan Momtaz

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is a member of the family Retroviridae, genus Deltaretrovirus that has three important gene including gag, pol and env. This virus causes B-cell lymphocytosis and lymphosarcoma in cows. In the first step PCR product of gag gene of BLV isolated in different regions of Iran and BLV-FLK strain was cloned into a pTZ57R/T vector, then insert were digested by BglII and XhoI restriction enzymes and cloned into pET-28(a) as an expression vector. Analysis of the partial bovine leukemia virus (BLV) virus gag gene sequences obtained from insert and was carried out. The Iranian BLV gag sequence was compared to five other corresponding sequences of BLV isolated in different countries. Nucleotide analyzing of the sequences were shown a variation of 1 - 8.7% and constructing phylogenetic tree revealed two clusters in it. First cluster included New York, Maryland, Japan and Iranian sample, second cluster included Australian and Argentina strains. Iranian isolates were significantly identical to European and American isolates.