A previous report suggested that the evolution of VP1 may be influenced by the activities of RdRp (Bull et al., 2010). Collectively, our bioinformatics data also showed that the evolution of the GII.2 VP1 gene was accelerated by a recombination of ORF1, including the RdRp gene. However, additional in vitro studies regarding the mutation rates of RdRp of the GII.P2 and GII.P16 may be needed to clarify the hypothesis of the relationships between and VP1 and RdRp genes in this study. Furthermore, GII.2 variant strains were detected in the present season (2016/17 season), and thus, further genetic studies may be needed to prove this hypothesis.