Phylogenetic and geographic analysis of fowl adenovirus field strains isolated from poultry in Poland

Fowl adenoviruses (FAdVs) are widely distributed in chickens in Poland and throughout the world. FAdV infections have been reported in the United States, Australia, Europe, and the Mediterranean basin. Detection of FAdVs strains is very important from the epidemiological point of view and for monitoring disease outbreaks and developing strategies for vaccine development. Several molecular epidemiology and phylogenetic studies have been performed, but the results obtained are still limited, because FAdV strains, even of the same serotype, have very diverse characteristics. Some strains are pathogenic and some are nonpathogenic. This report describes the successful isolation of 96 FAdV field strains from chickens in Poland. A PCR assay specific for the L1 loop region of the hexon gene was conducted, and the products were subjected to sequence analysis. The sequences were analysed using BLAST and Geneious 6.0 software and compared to adenovirus field and reference strain sequences from different parts of the world that are accessible in the NCBI GenBank database. The sequences of the adenovirus strains indicated that they belonged to five species, Fowl aviadenovirus A-E, represented by eight serotypes FAdV-1, FAdV-4, FAdV-5, FAdV-7, FAdV-8a, FAdV-8b, and FAdV-2/11 (FAdV-D). The relationships between FAdVs isolated in Poland and isolates from other regions of the world were determined.