Complete genome sequence of a recombinant Marek's disease virus field strain with one reticuloendotheliosis virus long terminal repeat insert.

Marek's disease virus (MDV) Chinese strain GX0101, isolated in 2001 from a vaccinated flock of layer chickens with severe tumors, was the first reported recombinant MDV field strain with one reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV) long terminal repeat (LTR) insert. GX0101 belongs to very virulent MDV (vvMDV) but has higher horizontal transmission ability than the vvMDV strain Md5. The complete genome sequence of GX0101 is 178,101 nucleotides (nt) and contains only one REV-LTR insert at a site 267 nt upstream of the sorf2 gene. Moreover, GX0101 has 5 repeats of a 217-nt fragment in its terminal repeat short (TRS) region and 3 repeats in internal repeat short (IRS) region, compared to the other 10 strains with only 1 or 2 repeats in both TRS and IRS.