Hantaan(HTN) virus, the murid rodent-borne Hantavirus harbored ty the striped-field mouse (Apodemus agrarius), has been known to cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome(HFRS) in Korea. To evaluate the detection rate of HTN viral antigens from
the
HFRS patients' sera, and to determine the genomic diversity and molecular phylogeny of HTN viruses found in Korea, we enzymatically amplified and directly sequenced for the 5' G2-encoding regions of M genomic segment of HTN viruses extracted from
acute
phase sera obtained from the HFRS patients diagnosed by indirect immunofluorescence antibody technique(IFA). The detection rate was 11.2%(22 positive cases in 196 seropositive samples) by nested reverse transcription-polymerase chain
reaction(nested
RT-PCR). Based on 324 nucleotides and 108 amino acids, fourteen and eleven different sequence patterns, respectively, were observed in HTN viruses found in Korea till now, and the HTN strains from Korea compared each other showed 93.5-100%(0 to
21
base
substitutions) and 92.6-100%(0 to 8 amino acid substitutions) homologies, respectively. By contrast, Korean HTN strains were differed by 13.3-24.1%(43 to 77 base substitutions) in nucleotide level and 4.6-10.2%(5 to 11 amino acid substitutions)
in
amino
acid level compared to Chinese HTN strains from Korea and China formed different phylogenetic groups, and that the Korean HTN strains have evolved along same geographically dependent lineage.
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