An Ancient Lineage of Highly Divergent Parvoviruses Infects both Vertebrate and Invertebrate Hosts

Abstract

Chapparvoviruses (ChPVs) comprise a divergent, recently identified group of parvoviruses (family Parvoviridae), associated with nephropathy in immunocompromised laboratory mice and with prevalence in deep sequencing results of livestock showing diarrhea. Here, we investigate the biological and evolutionary characteristics of ChPVs via comparative in silico analyses, incorporating sequences derived from endogenous parvoviral elements (EPVs) as well as exogenous parvoviruses. We show that ChPVs are an ancient lineage within the Parvoviridae, clustering separately from members of both currently established subfamilies. Consistent with this, they exhibit a number of characteristic features, including several putative auxiliary protein-encoding genes, and capsid proteins with no sequence-level homology to those of other parvoviruses. Homology modeling indicates the absence of a β-A strand, normally part of the luminal side of the parvoviral capsid protein core. Our findings demonstrate that the ChPV lineage infects an exceptionally broad range of host species, including both vertebrates and invertebrates. Furthermore, we observe that ChPVs found in fish are more closely related to those from invertebrates than they are to those of amniote vertebrates. This suggests that transmission between distantly related host species may have occurred in the past and that the Parvoviridae family can no longer be divided based on host affiliation.

Meta-transcriptomic analysis of virus diversity in urban wild birds with paretic disease

“…Chapparvoviruses are being increasingly identified in metagenomic studies, and seemingly have a wide host range (42), including bats (43), and the feces of turkeys (44), red-crowned cranes (45), wild rats (46) and pigs (47). Importantly, a murine kidney parvovirus was recently found in immunodeficient laboratory mice strains, causing renal failure and kidney fibrosis (48), indicating that some chapparvoviruses are associated with highly virulent infections.…”

MKPV (aka MuCPV) and related chapparvoviruses are nephro-tropic and encode novel accessory proteins p15 and NS2

“…Immune status is unknown for most of the samples. Of those samples designated as representing immunodeficient mice, 16 were positive out of 171 tested (9.4%), and for samples designated as representing immunocompetent mice, 56 out of 513 (10.9%) tested positive for MKPV. It should be noted that many of the faecal samples are likely to represent soiled-bedding sentinel mice, and the prevalence among sentinel mice may differ from colony animals, which may be immunocompetent or immunodeficient, based on a variety of factors including shedding dynamics and efficiency of transmission by soiled bedding.…”

“…Recently, additional chapparvovirus sequences were discovered by screening of draft genome assemblies; presumed to reflect parvoviral infection of the source animal rather than viral genome integration (14). The growing list of host species now includes marsupials, fish and invertebrates, with chapparvoviral genomes incorporated into some invertebrate genomes (15)(16)(17). Thus, chapparvoviruses are an ancient lineage within the family Parvoviridae, clustering separately from members of the two currently established parvoviral subfamilies Parvovirinae and Densovirinae (16).…”

“…The growing list of host species now includes marsupials, fish and invertebrates, with chapparvoviral genomes incorporated into some invertebrate genomes (15)(16)(17). Thus, chapparvoviruses are an ancient lineage within the family Parvoviridae, clustering separately from members of the two currently established parvoviral subfamilies Parvovirinae and Densovirinae (16). Curiously, fish and arthropod chapparvoviruses are more related to each other than to tetrapod chapparvoviruses (16).…”

“…Thus, chapparvoviruses are an ancient lineage within the family Parvoviridae, clustering separately from members of the two currently established parvoviral subfamilies Parvovirinae and Densovirinae (16). Curiously, fish and arthropod chapparvoviruses are more related to each other than to tetrapod chapparvoviruses (16). In all, at least forty-seven chapparvovirus species have been identified so far; in the tetrapods spread across bats, pigs, rodents, dogs, non-human primates, marsupials, birds and reptiles.…”