Genomic sequence analysis of Epstein-Barr virus strain GD1 from a nasopharyngeal carcinoma patient

To date, the only entire Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genomic sequence available in the database is the prototype B95.8, which was derived from an individual with infectious mononucleosis. A causative link between EBV and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), a disease with a distinctly high incidence in southern China, has been widely investigated. However, no full-length analysis of any substrain of EBV from this area has been reported. In this study, we analyzed the entire genomic sequence of an EBV strain from a patient with NPC in Guangdong, China. This EBV strain was termed GD1 (Guangdong strain 1), and the full-length sequence of GD1 was submitted to the GenBank database. The assigned accession number is AY961628. The entire GD1 sequence is 171,656 bp in length, with 59.5% G+C content and 40.5% A+T content. We detected many sequence variations in GD1 compared to prototypical strain B95.8, including 43 deletion sites, 44 insertion sites, and 1,413 point mutations. Furthermore, we evaluated the frequency of some of these GD1 mutations in Cantonese NPC patients and found them to be highly prevalent. These findings suggest that GD1 is highly representative of the EBV strains isolated from NPC patients in Guangdong, China, an area with the highest incidence of NPC in the world. Furthermore, these findings provide the second full-length sequence analysis of any EBV strain as well as the first full-length sequence analysis of an NPC-derived EBV strain.