Viral nervous necrosis ( VNN) is a worldwide disease among teleost fish. In the mainland of China, VNN was first identified in 2 species of hatchery-reared groupers, Epinep helus akaara and E . coioides . In the present study , samples were collected from larvae of E . akaar a w ith signs of VNN in Dayawan bay which is located in so uthern China. The complete viral coat protein gene was amplified using extracted total RNA as template. The reverse transcription po lymerase chain reaction ( RT-PCR) amplification was performed using primers containing a heterolo gous restriction site for NotI. PCR products were cloned into pcDNA3 vector and sequenced. The results indicated that the coat protein gene of Dayawan iso late ( RG-CN) was 1056 bases in length and contained a single open reading frame ( ORF) of 1017 bases encoding a protein of 338 amino acids. The sequence similarities between the coat protein gene of RG-CN and other 8 isolates of NNV from Dayawan, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and France were 79. 1%- 99. 5% at the nucleotide level and 83. 7%- 100% at the amino acid level, respectively. The homo logy between RG-CN and the other 5 isolates from groupers was high and relatively lower between RG-CN and guppy nervous necro sis virus ( GNNV) , sea bass nervous necrosis v ir us ( DIEV) , but more divergences existed between RG-CN and striped jack nevo us necro sis virus ( SJNNV) . Compared w ith SJNNV, RG-CN and the other 7 iso lates all lacked 6 nucleotides and 2 amino acids in the same po sitions. Based on the result of molecular phylogenetic analysis, Dayawan iso late belongs to red- spotted grouper nervous necrosis virus ( RGNNV) genotype.