Genetic Tracking of the Raccoon Variant of Rabies Virus in Eastern North America

To gain insight into the incursion of the raccoon variant of rabies into the raccoon population in three Canadian provinces, a collection of 192 isolates of the raccoon rabies virus (RRV) strain was acquired from across its North American range and was genetically characterized. A 516-nucleotide segment of the non-coding region between the G and L protein open reading frames, corresponding to the most variable region of the rabies virus genome, …