Mercadeo Virus: A Novel Mosquito-Specific Flavivirus from Panama

Carrera, Jean Paul; Guzmán, Hilda; Beltran, Davis; Díaz, Yamilka; López‐Vergès, Sandra; Torres-Cosme, Rolando; Popov, Vsevolod L.; Widen, Steven G.; Wood, Thomas G.; Weaver, Scott C.; Cáceres-Carrera, Lorenzo; Vasilakis, Nikos; Tesh, Robert B.

doi:10.4269/ajtmh.15-0117

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…With the advent of new molecular tools and growing interest in the mosquito virome, several new ISFs have been reported. Aedes flavivirus, Hanko virus, Culex theileri flavivirus, Quang Binh virus and Mercadeo virus are just a few of the newly discovered ISFs in last few years [ 27 – 32 ]. ISFs are believed to be maintained in the mosquito population through vertical transmission, although horizontal transmission between mosquitoes can also occur for some viruses [ 33 , 34 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of Novel Viruses in Mosquitoes from the Zambezi Valley of Mozambique

et al. 2016

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Mosquitoes carry a wide variety of viruses that can cause vector-borne infectious diseases and affect both human and veterinary public health. Although Mozambique can be considered a hot spot for emerging infectious diseases due to factors such as a rich vector population and a close vector/human/wildlife interface, the viral flora in mosquitoes have not previously been investigated. In this study, viral metagenomics was employed to analyze the viral communities in Culex and Mansonia mosquitoes in the Zambezia province of Mozambique. Among the 1.7 and 2.6 million sequences produced from the Culex and Mansonia samples, respectively, 3269 and 983 reads were classified as viral sequences. Viruses belonging to the Flaviviridae, Rhabdoviridae and Iflaviridae families were detected, and different unclassified single- and double-stranded RNA viruses were also identified. A near complete genome of a flavivirus, tentatively named Cuacua virus, was obtained from the Mansonia mosquitoes. Phylogenetic analysis of this flavivirus, using the NS5 amino acid sequence, showed that it grouped with ‘insect-specific’ viruses and was most closely related to Nakiwogo virus previously identified in Uganda. Both mosquito genera had viral sequences related to Rhabdoviruses, and these were most closely related to Culex tritaeniorhynchus rhabdovirus (CTRV). The results from this study suggest that several viruses specific for insects belonging to, for example, the Flaviviridae and Rhabdoviridae families, as well as a number of unclassified RNA viruses, are present in mosquitoes in Mozambique.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovery of Novel Viruses in Mosquitoes from the Zambezi Valley of Mozambique

et al. 2016

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“…We designed this study to compare mosquito species composition from three enzootic arbovirus (VEEV and EEEV) transmission foci in the Panamá and Darién provinces and the autonomous indigenous Comarca (territorial political division assigned to indigenous groups) Ngäbe Buglé. In the selected study areas infections in humans, horses and/or wildlife animals have been reported [ 4 , 6 ], or in mosquito pools identified to the genus level [ 27 ]. Darién is the easternmost province in Panamá, bordering Colombia.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enzootic mosquito vector species at equine encephalitis transmission foci in the República de Panamá

Torres

Samudio²,

Carrera

et al. 2017

PLoS ONE

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The identification of mosquito vector species present at arboviral enzootic transmission foci is important to understand transmission eco-epidemiology and to propose and implement prevention and control strategies that reduce vector-borne equine encephalitis transmission. The goal of this study was to identify mosquito species potentially involved in the transmission of enzootic equine encephalitis, in relation to their abundance and diversity at three endemic regions in the República de Panamá. We sampled adult mosquitoes during the dry and rainy season of Panamá. We employed CDC light traps with octanol, EV traps with CO2 and Trinidad 17 traps baited with live hamsters. Traps were deployed in the peridomicile and extradomicile of houses from 18:00 to 6:00 h. We estimated the abundance and diversity of sampled species. We collected a total of 4868 mosquitoes, belonging to 45 species and 11 genera, over 216 sampling nights. Culex (Melanoconion) pedroi, a major Venezuelan equine encephalitis vector was relatively rare (< 2.0% of all sampled mosquitoes). We also found Cx. (Mel) adamesi, Cx. (Mel) crybda, Cx. (Mel) ocossa, Cx. (Mel) spissipes, Cx. (Mel) taeniopus, Cx. (Mel) vomerifer, Aedes scapularis, Ae. angustivittatus, Coquillettidia venezuelensis, Cx. nigripalpus, Cx. declarator, Mansonia titillans, M. pseudotitillans and Psorophora ferox all species known to be vectorially competent for the transmission of arboviruses. Abundance and diversity of mosquitoes in the sampled locations was high, when compared with similar surveys in temperate areas. Information from previous reports about vectorial competence / capacity of the sampled mosquito species suggest that sampled locations have all the elements to support enzootic outbreaks of Venezuelan and Eastern equine encephalitides.

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“…Data such as this could potentially be an entry point into identifying additional, potentially novel, microbial or viral members of the mosquito microbiome. For example, in our Illumina data for Sample 1.1, Kaiju (but not the other tools) identified 709 reads similar to Mercadeo Virus (MECDV) – a recently identified insect-specific flavivirus (ISF) 51 . Furthermore, our read mapping results show 752 Illumina reads from Sample 1.1 aligned to MECDV, yet zero reads from Sample 4.1 were aligned to the same virus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unbiased Strain-Typing of Arbovirus Directly from Mosquitoes Using Nanopore Sequencing: A Field-forward Biosurveillance Protocol

Russell

Campos

Stone

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

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The future of infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response is trending towards smaller hand-held solutions for point-of-need pathogen detection. Here, samples of Culex cedecei mosquitoes collected in Southern Florida, USA were tested for Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (VEEV), a previously-weaponized arthropod-borne RNA-virus capable of causing acute and fatal encephalitis in animal and human hosts. A single 20-mosquito pool tested positive for VEEV by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) on the Biomeme two3. The virus-positive sample was subjected to unbiased metatranscriptome sequencing on the Oxford Nanopore MinION and shown to contain Everglades Virus (EVEV), an alphavirus in the VEEV serocomplex. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, the use of unbiased sequence-based detection and subtyping of a high-consequence biothreat pathogen directly from an environmental sample using field-forward protocols. The development and validation of methods designed for field-based diagnostic metagenomics and pathogen discovery, such as those suitable for use in mobile “pocket laboratories”, will address a growing demand for public health teams to carry out their mission where it is most urgent: at the point-of-need.

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Mercadeo Virus: A Novel Mosquito-Specific Flavivirus from Panama

Cited by 22 publications

References 52 publications

Discovery of Novel Viruses in Mosquitoes from the Zambezi Valley of Mozambique

Discovery of Novel Viruses in Mosquitoes from the Zambezi Valley of Mozambique

Enzootic mosquito vector species at equine encephalitis transmission foci in the República de Panamá

Unbiased Strain-Typing of Arbovirus Directly from Mosquitoes Using Nanopore Sequencing: A Field-forward Biosurveillance Protocol

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