Objecflve To study the heredity and variance of E1 gene of rubella villls Matsuba vac-cine strain.and to evaluate the protective efficacy of the vaccine prepared by Matsuba vaccine strain on genelevel.Methods The Matsuba strain was passaged on primary rabbit kidnev cells from 14 to 23 generations.and the E1 genes of 14,16,17,18,23 passages amplified by RT-PCR were cloned into the T-A cloning vector pGEM-T and sequenced,respectively.The sequences of E1 gene of the passaged viruses were tom-pared with rubella virus Matsuba reference strain E1 gene(Accession No.D50673)and other rubella strains in GenBank.respectively.Results The Matanba passaged shared higher homology of nucleotide and amino acid with Matsuba reference strain(D50673).,The sequences of nucleotide and amino acid of RV14,RV16.RV18 were identical to D50673.The homology of nucleotide sequences of RV17,RV23 and D50673 was 99.9%and 99.7%,respectively,andthe homology of amino acidwgg 99.8% and 99.2%,respective-ly.The amino acid related to glycosylation and epitopes of the passage viruses were highly conservative.The phylogenetic tree showed Matsuba strain belonged to la genotype.The rubella virus genotypes circulated in China recent years were 1E,lF,2A and 2B,and 1E genotype was the predominant genotype.The homology of nucleotide and amino acid of Matsuba strain and the other genotype reference strains was 92.1%-99.6% and 98.1%-99.8%.respectively.Condusion The Matsuba vaccine strain possesses highly genetic stabil-ity.which indicates that the Matsuba strain and its vaccine are stable on molecular level.And the vaccine prepared by Matsuba vaccine strain can prevent the infection of various genotype rubella viruses.