Familial case of inherited human herpesvirus 6A with phylogenetic assessment

Abstract

The paper reports a familial case of HHV-6A chromosomal integration being an important and relevant issue of genetics and medicine. The study was aimed to test the hypothesis of HHV-6A chromosomal integration and vertical transmission in patient with persistent virus detection during recurrent respiratory diseases and the asymptomatic period when there were no health complaints. Sequencing of the patient’s father genome DNA was performed, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed by aligning 270 HHV-6A/B genome assemblies from the GenBank database. As a result, a familial case of ciHHV-6A transmission was identified. It was found that the detected ciHHV-6A observed on the phylogenetic tree was closely related to other two chromosomally integrated HHV-6A sequences reported by Moscow researchers. The study confirmed HHV-6A chromosomal integration. Further precise chromosome mapping of ciHHV-6A would be useful in terms of excluding probable somatic disorders associated with the chromosome structure alteration following HHV-6, particularly HHV-6A, integration, as well as for identification of insertion sites specific for various geographic locations.