Fig. 1

Experimental set up and HHV-6 genome calling mock up. a A total of 129 HHV-6 specimens comprised of 55 cultured HHV-6B strains from acute infections, 6 clinical samples from acute infections, and 64 iciHHV-6B and 10 iciHHV-6A cell lines were sequenced using a capture panel based on the HHV-6B reference genome (NC_000898). b Consensus genomes used for phylogenetic analysis were called for regions outside of the repeat regions for the HHV-6B specimens, including the unique long region (119 kb), U90/91 region (6 kb, between R2 and R3 repeats), and U94-100 (10 kb, between R3 and DR-R repeat). The HHV-6B capture panel recovered much of the unique long region from HHV-6A specimens. c Overall phylogeny of 40.2 kb sequence that was recovered from HHV-6A and HHV-6B strains sequenced reveals separation of HHV-6A and HHV-6B as separate herpesvirus species. Location images purchased from Adobe Stock