Occurrence of novel GII.17 and GII.21 norovirus variants in the coastal environment of South Korea in 2015

Human norovirus (HNoV), a positive-sense RNA virus, is the main causative agent of acute viral gastroenteritis. Multiple pandemic variants of the genogroup II genotype 4 (GII.4) of NoV have attracted great attention from researchers worldwide. However, novel variants of GII.17 have been overtaking those pandemic variants in some areas of East Asia. To investigate the environmental occurrence of GII in South Korea, we collected water samples from coastal streams and a neighboring waste water treatment plant in North Jeolla province (in March, July, and December of 2015). Based on capsid gene region C analysis, four different genotypes (GII.4, GII.13, GII.17, and GII.21) were detected, with much higher prevalence of GII.17 than of GII.4. Additional sequence analyses of the ORF1-ORF2 junction and ORF2 from the water samples revealed that the GII.17 sequences in this study were closely related to the novel strains of GII.P17-GII.17, the main causative variants of the 2014-2015 HNoV outbreak in China and Japan. In addition, the GII.P21-GII.21 variants were identified in this study and they had new amino acid sequence variations in the blockade epitopes of the P2 domain. From these results, we present two important findings: 1) the novel GII.P17-GII.17 variants appeared to be predominant in the study area, and 2) new GII.21 variants have emerged in South Korea.