Department of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand * cniwat@chula.ac.th
Thirteen field isolates of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV)
were isolated from broiler flocks in Thailand between
January and June 2008. The 878-bp of the S1 gene
covering a hypervariable region was amplified and
sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis based on that region
revealed that these viruses were separated into two groups
(I and II). IBV isolates in group I were not related to other
IBV strains published in the GenBank database. Group 1
nucleotide sequence identities were less than 85% and
amino acid sequence identities less than 84% in common
with IBVs published in the GenBank database. This group
likely represents the strains indigenous to Thailand. The
isolates in group II showed a close relationship with
Chinese IBVs. They had nucleotide sequence identities of
97-98% and amino acid sequence identities 96-98% in
common with Chinese IBVs (strain A2, SH and QXIBV).
This finding indicated that the recent Thai IBVs evolved
separately and at least two groups of viruses are
circulating in Thailand.