Spodoptera littoralis Boisd. (Lepidoptera:Noctuidae) nucleopolyhedrovirus (SpliNPV) is a member of Baculoviridae and belongs to the group II NPVs. Lef-8 is a well-conserved gene that is characterized in most of the lepidopteran NPVs. Nucleotide and aminoacid sequences of the encoded proteins and gene content may be phylogenetically informative. In this study, lef-8 gene in the Turkish SpliNPV-B (SpliNPV-TR1) genome was partially amplified by PCR and analyzed by amino-acid sequences with several

more »

... baculoviruses. Amino-acid sequences of partial SpliNPV-TR1 lef-8 gene was 84 % identical to the lef-8 of SpltNPV while revealed it to have about only 57 %, 55 %, 51 %, 50 %, 50 %, 50 % and 49 % of its amino-acid sequence identity with AgipNPV, McNPV, RoNPV, HaNPV-G4, AcNPV, HzNPV and BufuNPV, respectively. The sequences between SpliNPV-TR1 and granuloviruses also produced low levels of sequence identities (maximum 46 %). Although group II NPVs were rather isolated from noctuid hosts, the low level identity values detected between these noctuid NPVs (except the high idendity value between SpliNPV-TR1 and SpltNPV) revealed that these isolates can not have a monophyletic origin.