Genotyping of newly isolated infectious bronchitis virus isolates from northeastern Georgia.

Sixteen infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) field isolates obtained from vaccinated commercial broiler chickens showing clinical respiratory disease were characterized by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and sequence analysis of the hypervariable region of the S1 spike glycoprotein gene. The genetic relationship among these variants and reference strains was determined by phylogenetic analysis and use of the basic local alignment search tool. All the isolates formed a distinct phylogenetic group with very short branched distances, suggesting that isolates had a similar origin.