Highly conserved intragenic HSV-2 sequences: Results from next-generation sequencing of HSV-2 UL and US regions from genital swabs collected from 3 continents

•HSV-2 genomes were recovered from genital swabs containing unenriched HSV-2 DNA.•HSV-2 was highly conserved without geographically based strains identified from 3 continents.•Among selected HSV-2 vaccine and diagnostic targets, coding variation was rare.

IntroductionUnderstanding the variability in circulating herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) genomic sequences is critical to the development of HSV-2 vaccines.MethodsGenital lesion swabs containing ≥ 107 log10 copies HSV DNA collected from Africa, the USA, and South America underwent next-generation sequencing, followed by K-mer based filtering and de novo genomic assembly. Sites of heterogeneity within coding regions in unique long and unique short (UL_US) regions were identified. Phylogenetic trees were created using maximum likelihood reconstruction.ResultsAmong 46 samples from 38 persons, 1468 intragenic base-pair substitutions were identified. The maximum nucleotide distance between strains for concatenated UL_US segments was 0.4%. Phylogeny did not reveal geographic clustering. The most variable proteins had non-synonymous mutations in < 3% of amino acids.ConclusionsUnenriched HSV-2 DNA can undergo next-generation sequencing to identify intragenic variability. The use of clinical swabs for sequencing expands the information that can be gathered directly from these specimens.