Analysis of human herpesvirus genomes based on COGs and Phylogenomics

ChangJin Shin1, CheolMin Kim2, Byeong-Chul Kang, Jun-Hyung Par, Dong-Hoon Shin, Ok-Kyung Ham, Choon-Hwan Lee
1teragene@pusan.ac.kr, Busan Genome Center; 2kimcm@pusan.ac.kr, Busan National University

The aim of this study is a development of a suitable procedure to predict the function of viral genes. To overcome conventional searches based on similarity, HHV (Human Herpesvirus genomes) were analyzed by COG and phylogenomic methods. 114 HCOGs (Human Herpesvirus COGs) were constructed by COG technique. Gene contents tree was built using HCOGs. This tree shows that each HCOGs was assinged to one of 3 groups, a-specific group, b-specific group or the group containing a,b,g subgroups. Species tree was derived from DNA polymerase sequences in order to apply phylogenomics methods for distinguishing paralogs and orthologs. 47 candidates of gene duplication in 148 gelycoproteins were inferred by SDI (Speciation and Duplication Inference) algorithm. 7 ORFs excluded in original HCOGs were newly assinged into 5 HCOGs related with glycoproteins. This study suggest that phylogenomcis method is useful supportive tool for annotatoin of viral gene. If COG and phylogenomics techniques are combined, it will provide a practical method to predict the function of new genes in viral genome.