To characterize and classify further the Chinese HRV strains, 59UTR sequences were considered (Table 3 , Fig. 2 ). They were compared to the 59 UTR of all 101 reference HRVs, to those of 26 new strains identified in children with respiratory illness in Wisconsin (indicated as W) [15] , and to those of other recently identified HRV-C strains [14] . Pairwise nucleotide divergence between the three HRV species was 0.7-64.3%, and a limit of ,9% divergence between genotype pairs was chosen for similar genotype assignment in one species [15] . New genotypes were identified when they had 9-30% pairwise nucleotide divergence from the nearest serotype in the same species (Table 3) . Fifty-five HRVs shared .94.4% nucleotide identity with strains already identified, and 11 HRVs showed 9.5-20.9% nucleotide divergence with the nearest known HRVs. They may represent newly discovered genotypes. These strains clustered with HRV-A (N6) or HRV-C species (N4, N8, N21, N62, N63, N67, N24, N25, N28 and N32) ( Table 3) .