Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2017) 6(7): 1727-1734 1727 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.607.208 Glycoprotein Based Phylogenetic Analysis of Rabies Virus Isolates Neha R. Tomar 1* , Rajiv Kumar 2 and Anil Kumar 3 1 Department of Zoology, Kumaun University, S. S. J. Campus, Almora, Uttarakhand, India 2 Division of Animal Genetics and Breeding, C. S. W. R. I., Avikanagar, Rajasthan, India 3 Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Rabies virus (RV) almost always causes a fatal encephalomyelitis in several species of mammals including humans (Dietzschold, 1996). This virus is prototype of the Lyssavirus genus of the family Rhabdoviridae and is an enveloped virus having non- segmented, negative stranded RNA as genome. The genome of virus is about 12 kb in size and encodes five proteins; the nucleoprotein (N), the phosphoprotein (P), the matrix protein (M), the glycoprotein (G), and the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (L). The viral RNA, which is always encapsidated by N, forms the ribonucleoprotein (RNP), which is the template for viral replication and transcription (Conzelmann, 2004). The RNP together with P and L forms the viral replication complex, which is surrounded by the host cell-derived membrane that also contains glycoprotein (G). Matrix protein has been proposed to bridge the RNP and the cytoplasmic domain (CD) of RVG to form the bullet-shaped virion (Mebatsion, 1999). The RVG, which is organized as a trimer, is the major contributor to pathogenicity. The glycoprotein G of the virus is the major antigen responsible for the induction of protective immunity being the sole protein exposed on the surface of the virion. It interacts with cellular receptors (Hanham, 1993), mediates pH-dependent fusion, and International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 7 (2017) pp. 1727-1734 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Glycoprotein of rabies virus is major contributor to pathogenicity. Glycoprotein based phylogenetic analysis of twenty three rabies and rabies related virus including CVS strain was done by aligning the sequences by clustal W. Glycoprotein sequence based phylogenetic tree was constructed and ten conserved motifs were analyzed among these glycoproteins. The unique sequence of motif 4 was observed only in CVS strain (FJ979833) which might be responsible for discriminating CVS strain from other rabies virus strains. The present study might open the possibility of developing strain specific PCR for identification of rabies virus in canids. Keywords Canids, Rabies, Glycoprotein, Phylogeny, Strain specific PCR. Accepted: 19 June 2017 Available Online: 10 July 2017 Article Info