Complete H coding sequence from a 1912 measles virus (Berlin, Germany)

This is the complete coding sequence of the H gene of a measles virus from 1912. This virus caused a fatal measles-related bronchopneumonia in the young patient, whose lung is preserved by the Berlin Museum of Medical History of the Charité (Berlin, Germany).

A first consensus genome was already published based on short Illumina reads generated from 9 libraries (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba9411). However, the coding sequence of the H gene still contained ambiguous positions, including at certain coding positions.

Since the original publication, we have built and sequenced an additional 9 libraries (following slight variations of the method described in the article), more than doubling the number of high-quality reads. Using the same base call criteria (at least three unique reads, majority rule), this enlarged dataset now allows for the recovery of a completely unambiguous H sequence coding sequence. 

Importantly, more conservative base call criteria (at least 10 unique reads, 90% agreement) only result in 22 ambiguous positions, out of which only two would encode different amino acids. The majority bases at these two positions account for 87% and 88% of all observed bases.

Therefore, we consider that this consensus nucleotide sequence (and its translation) represents a very high quality estimate of the underlying viral sequence.