Hepatitis B virus detected in paper currencies in a densely populated city of India: A plausible source of horizontal transmission?

Figure 3 Phylogenetic analysis of the hepatitis B virus S gene (partial) of the hepatitis B virus isolates from the currency notes relative to several other hepatitis B virus isolates of genotype D. The analysis was based on variability in 510 nucleotides (nt), pertaining to nt positions 326-835 as in in hepatitis B virus 34 genotype D2 isolate, accession number KC875340, West Bengal, India. Hepatitis B virus sequences and their place of origin, retrieved from GenBank for comparing with hepatitis B virus sequences in the present study, are identified by their GenBank accession numbers. The numbers shown next to the branches of the phylogenetic tree represent the percentage of replicate trees in which the associated taxa grouped together in the bootstrap test (2000 replicates). The scale bar indicates genetic distance in terms of nucleotide substitution/site/year.