Identification of recombinants of hepatitis B virus genotypes C from Hong Kong China

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections severely threaten the health of the human being. Frequent recombination of HBV within or between genotypes was reported to favor the viral evolution and adaption and the recombination may cause more severe clinical symptoms. In the study, we collected genotype C HBV from five Asian countries and detected their possible recombination events by bioinformatic analysis. There are two main subtypes, C1 and C2, within the C genotypes among the collected data in the study. Subtype C1 is most prevalent in Cambodia, Bangladesh, and China, while C2 is prevalent in Japan, Indonesia, and a small part of China. Three recombination events were detected and verified from C1 genotype HBV from Hong Kong China as demonstrated by recombinant (KJ410515), ranging from 2381 to 1861 nt. Recombinant events were detected and verified by recombination analysis in the study. It is important to filter possible recombinants when using the online-genbank data to do phylogenetic analysis.