OBJECTIVETo confirm the existence of Amur-like viruses in Apodemus peninsulae in China, and to understand the molecular characteristics of these viruses.

METHODSTotal RNA was extracted from lungs of A. peninsulae captured in Jilin of Northeast China with Trizol reagent. Complete S and partial M segments of Amur virus were amplified and sequenced. Phylogenetic analyses on multiple nucleotide sequences were performed with the Clustal method and DNASTAR software.

RESULTS383 bp cDNA of M segment and 1696 bp of S segment of Amur like virus were recovered from lung tissue of A. peninsulae, named JilinAP06. The full-length of its S gene comprised of 1696 nucleotides with ORF including 1287 nucleotides and encoding a protein which comprised 429 amino acids. The phylogenetic analysis of this sample with other hantaviruses revealed that the complete S and partial M segment sequence of JilinAP06 both were closely related to those Amur viruses such as AP63, AP61, AP1371 and AP1168 found in A. peninsulae from Far East region of Russia and B78 strain, Liu strain and H5 strain, which were all from Chinese patients. The complete S and partial M segment sequence of JilinAP06 had only 81.0% identities with the nucleotide sequences of HV prototype 76-118 strain.

CONCLUSIONAmur-like viruses did exist in A. peninsulae from Northeasern China while A. peninsulae might be the natural reservoir of Amur-like viruses in China and was the important infectious source to HFRS patients which were caused by Amur-like viruses.