Abstract
The genus Pestivirus within the family Flaviviridae currently consists of four different main species: Classical swine fever virus, Bovine viral diarrhea virus types 1 and 2 and Border disease virus. A fifth tentative species is represented by an isolate from a giraffe. In this study, a completely new pestivirus, isolated from a batch of fetal calf serum that was collected in Brazil, is described. It is proposed that the isolate D32/00_HoBi may constitute a novel sixth pestivirus species, because it is genetically, as well as antigenically, markedly different from all other pestiviruses. Based on the entire Npro- and E2-encoding sequences, identities of <70 % to all other pestivirus species were determined. Similarly, cross-neutralization and binding studies using antisera and mAbs revealed marked antigenic differences between D32/00_HoBi and all other pestiviruses.
The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 5'-UTR, Npro, E2, NS3 and 3'-UTR sequences of isolate D32/00_HoBi reported in this paper are AY489116, AY489117, AY604725, AY713481 and AY604726, respectively.