Microbiology Society, Journal of General Virology, 6(96), p. 1358-1368, 2015
DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.000084
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Feline coronavirus (FCoV) infections are endemic amongst cats worldwide. The majority of infections are asymptomatic, or result only in mild enteric disease. However, approximately 5% of cases develop feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a systemic disease that is a frequent cause of death in young cats. In this study, we report the complete coding genome sequences of six FCoVs; three from fecal samples from healthy cats and three from tissue lesion samples from cats with confirmed FIP. The six samples were obtained over a period of eight weeks at a single-site cat rescue and rehoming center in the UK. We found amino acid differences are located at 44 positions across an alignment of the six virus translatomes and, at 21 of these positions, the differences fully or partially discriminate between the genomes derived from the fecal samples and the genomes derived from tissue lesion samples. In this study, two amino acid differences fully discriminate the two classes of genomes; these are both located in the S2 domain of the virus surface glycoprotein gene. We also identified deletions in the 3c protein ORF of genomes from two of the FIP samples. Our results support previous studies that implicate S protein mutations in the pathogenesis of FIP.