Fig. 1

N-terminal amino acid sequence alignment of the different UL146 genotypes and endogenous human CXC chemokines. Genotype 5 and 6 in the blue box have distinct N-termini lacking the ELR motif present in the other 12 UL146 genotypes (names of representative strains encoding each genotype are specified). This motif is conserved in all human CXC chemokines targeting the neutrophil receptors CXCR1 and CXCR2 (CXCL1–8) and lacking in the ones targeting the other CXC chemokine receptors present on different leukocyte subsets (CXCL9–13 and − 16), thus suggesting a different receptor target and biological function of UL146 genotype 5 and 6 (blue question mark). The alignment was generated using ClustalW2