Previous studies have shown that only the VP1 protein is located in the CAV virion. Thus, VP1 is also thought to be a DNA-binding protein that is responsible for the encapsidation of a viral genome during virus assembly. Presently, VP3 is the only one of three CAV viral proteins that has exhibited DNA binding activity in previous studies . However, the function of VP1 on nucleic acid binding is still unknown. To gain insight into the role of the capsid protein VP1 in DNA binding, the bioinformatics software DP-Bind (http://lcg.rit.albany.edu/dp-bind/) was applied to analyse the features of DNA binding motifs within the amino acid sequence of the VP1 protein. Computational results of the DNA binding motif from the VP1 protein are shown in Fig. 1. Four potential DNA binding motifs were predicted by the DP-Bind program, and the putative motif position spanned from amino acids residues 3 to 22, 27 to 47, 62 to 67 and 333 to 349. According to these predicted results, VP1 might be having potential activity to bind DNA molecules. However, further investigation is still needed to verify the DNA binding activity of VP1.