Phylogenetic analysis and genetic diversity of the honey bee sacbrood virus

Sacbrood virus is a single strand RNA virus, which infect all life stages of honeybees. The infection shortens the lifespan of adult bees and lethal for larvae, which is the major cause for Asia honey bee losses. In this study, we collected honey bees from local mountain area which is free of Apis.mellifera, as well as commercial apiaries holding Apis.mellifera and Apis.cerana. partial structural protein coding sequences were sequenced and compared with other SBV isolates on GenBank. Phylogenetic tree topologies showed that SBV isolates form two major groups, these two groups were formed according to their host specificity , indicated that host specificity exists among SBV strains isolated from different species. We also found that Asian isolates showed greater genetic diversity than the European isolates,and Zixi isolates are more genetically diverse than Tonggu isolates .