The Academy of Military Sciences issued a paper: identified the African swine fever virus naturally mutated strains

In February 2021, the Chinese Journal of Veterinary Medicine published a research paper completed by the Institute of Military Veterinary Medicine of the Military Academy of Sciences, "Identification of a naturally mutated strain of African swine fever virus", which pointed out that African swine fever (ASF) had been prevalent in China for more than 2 years after its infrascence in 2018.
recently, in response to the slowdown in the ASF epidemic in China and the low mortality rate in infected pigs, we isolated from actively monitored samples a natural variant of ASFV originating in a part of Hubei Province.
by genome sequencing, the EP402R gene (CD2v) and the upstream adjacent EP153R gene (8CR) were partially missing, totalling 1252bp, resulting in loss of viral blood adsorption properties; Unique base mutations, missing or insertions occur in multiple gene coding and gene interval regions, which are completely different from the 10 PUBLISHV strains that have been published in China, which lead to changes in the amino acid composition and loss of function of viral proteins; At the end of genome 3' there is a 503bp series of repeated nucleic acid fragment insertion, which is up to 96% congenital with the sequence at the end of the genome of foreign strains.
the mutant does not contain any known marker genes, indicating that a natural variant of ASFV has appeared in China, possibly related to the current subacute-type epidemic of ASF.