In silico analysis of Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-borne alphavirus

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-borne alpha virus, which belongs to the family, Togaviridae. This virus is known to cause an acute onset of high fever, severe arthralgia and rash, and is usually accompanied by headache and severe joint pain. The present study aimed to construct an updated phylogenetic tree of currently published data and perform a phylogeographic analysis of Chikungunya virus obtained during different outbreak in the last five years after the re- emerging of chikungunya virus to get further insight into the epidemiology and transmission of CHIKV. In this study, twenty two sequences from the E1envelope glycoprotein gene were aligned using ClustalW software program. A phylogenetic tree was constructed by using MEGA 5 software version 6, to determine the phylogenetic relationships of CHIKV during different outbreak recently in Yemen, Italy, Philippines, India and Africa. An updated phylogenetic tree was constructed, the results obtained suggested that CHIKV strains isolated recently in the Eastern Mediterranean Region share high similarity with chikungunya virus isolated in Tanzania in 1953.   Key words: Chikungunya fever, epidemiology, outbreaks, phylogenetic tree.