School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nagasaki University, Japan.
The complete nucleotide sequence of the genome of the dengue virus type 3 was determined. Sequence analyses of the genomic RNA and cloned cDNA revealed that the genomic RNA contains 10,696 nucleotides and encodes a single open reading frame of 10,170 nucleotides corresponding to 3390 amino acid residues. The N-terminal amino acid sequences of three structural proteins (C, M, and E proteins) and the preM protein were also determined from the purified virion. When the deduced amino acid sequence and N-terminal amino acid sequence determined from purified proteins were compared with those of other flaviviruses, the genome organization was found to be the same as that of other flaviviruses.