Figure 3

An alignment of the seventeen deduced amino acid sequences of the C-terminal region of VP1 from the East African SAT 2 FMD reference prototype virus strains and those collected from livestock and African buffalos in Uganda, between the years 2004 and 2007. Dots indicate sequence identity with master sequence, UGA/1/07 while the "X" in the ZAI/1/82 sequence denotes an ambiguity. The highly conserved 'RGD' cell attachment motifs are indicated by the shaded text box at positions 144-146. The recent buffalo sequences (UGA/1/07) and (UGA/2/07) have a number of amino acid differences from the other SAT 2 sequences including those from cattle in Uganda. These are clustered particularly within the regions 135-160 (G-H loop) and near the extreme C-terminus (residues 190-205). Such differences may be important in influencing the antigenicity of these various strains.