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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, October 2001, p. 2775-2780, Vol. 45, No. 10
Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center,
Chicago, Illinois1; University of
Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver,
Colorado2; Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical
Center, Boston, Massachusetts3; and
VA Medical Center, Portland, Oregon4
Received 8 February 2001/Returned for modification 2 May
2001/Accepted 16 July 2001
The widespread use of ganciclovir (GCV) to treat cytomegalovirus
(CMV) infections in immunosuppressed patients has led to the
development of drug resistance. Phenotypic assays for CMV drug
resistance are presently too time-consuming to be therapeutically useful. To support the development of genotypic assays for GCV resistance, the complete sequences of the UL97 phosphotransferase genes
in 28 phenotypically GCV-sensitive CMV clinical isolates were
determined. The gene was found to be highly conserved, with nucleotide
sequence identity among strains ranging from 98.6 to 100% and amino
acid sequence identity of >99%. Primers for a genotypic assay were
designed to amplify codons 400 to 707, because all known UL97 mutations
conferring drug resistance occur at three sites within this region.
This part of the UL97 gene was amplified from over 50 clinical
isolates, and two sequencing reactions for the coding strand were
successfully used to identify GCV resistance mutations. This genotypic
assay can be performed in 48 h using genomic DNA extracted from
cell monolayers at very low levels of virus infectivity, thus rapidly
providing therapeutically useful results.
0066-4804/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.45.10.2775-2780.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Sequencing of Cytomegalovirus UL97 Gene for
Genotypic Antiviral Resistance Testing
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department
of Immunology/Microbiology, Rush Medical College,
Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, 1653 West Congress
Pkwy., Chicago, IL 60612. Phone: (312) 942-8734. Fax: (312) 942-2808. E-mail: nlurain{at}rush.edu.
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