Sialovirome of Brazilian tropical anophelines

Machado

et al. 2023

Preprint

Mosquitoes can transmit several pathogenic viruses to humans, but their natural viral community is also composed of many insect-specific viruses (ISV) that modulate arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) transmission and mosquito fitness. Besides a growing number of studies investigating the mosquito virome the majority are focused on few urban species and relatively little is known about the virome of sylvatic mosquitoes. Here, we characterized the RNA virome of 10 sylvatic mosquitos species from Atlantic forest remains at a sylvatic-urban interface in Northeast Brazil employing a metatranscriptomic approach. We detected a total of 21 viral families. The phylogenetic reconstructions of 13 viral families revealed that the majority of the sequences are putative ISVs. The phylogenetic positioning and, in most cases, the association with a high RdRp amino acid divergence from other known viruses suggests that the viruses characterized here represent 60 new viral species. Therefore, the sylvatic mosquitoes viral community revealed a predominance of highly divergent viruses highlighting the limited knowledge we still have about the natural virome that infect these blood feeding insects. Moreover, we found a strong species-virome association as none of the viruses recovered were shared between the species investigated. These background findings will help to understand the interactions and coevolution between mosquitoes and viruses in nature.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly divergent and diverse viral community infecting sylvatic mosquitoes from Northeast Brazil

Machado

et al. 2023

Preprint

“…[116] Anopheles minimus iridovirus (AMIV) China An. minimus [50,196] * Table S2 displays additional ISV that have been identified in wild-caught Anopheles [197][198][199][200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213][214].…”

Section: Virus Name/abbreviation Countrymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Review on the Viruses of Anopheles Mosquitoes: The Potential Importance for Public Health

Hernandez-Valencia,

Muñoz-Laiton,

Gómez

et al. 2023

TropicalMed

Anopheles mosquitoes are the vectors of Plasmodium, the etiological agent of malaria. In addition, Anopheles funestus and Anopheles gambiae are the main vectors of the O’nyong-nyong virus. However, research on the viruses carried by Anopheles is scarce; thus, the possible transmission of viruses by Anopheles is still unexplored. This systematic review was carried out to identify studies that report viruses in natural populations of Anopheles or virus infection and transmission in laboratory-reared mosquitoes. The databases reviewed were EBSCO-Host, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus and PubMed. After the identification and screening of candidate articles, a total of 203 original studies were included that reported on a variety of viruses detected in Anopheles natural populations. In total, 161 viruses in 54 species from 41 countries worldwide were registered. In laboratory studies, 28 viruses in 15 Anopheles species were evaluated for mosquito viral transmission capacity or viral infection. The viruses reported in Anopheles encompassed 25 viral families and included arboviruses, probable arboviruses and Insect-Specific Viruses (ISVs). Insights after performing this review include the need for (1) a better understanding of Anopheles-viral interactions, (2) characterizing the Anopheles virome—considering the public health importance of the viruses potentially transmitted by Anopheles and the significance of finding viruses with biological control activity—and (3) performing virological surveillance in natural populations of Anopheles, especially in the current context of environmental modifications that may potentiate the expansion of the Anopheles species distribution.

“…The Merida virus was first detected in the Culex quinquefasciatus species in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and classified as a Rhabdovirus (Charles et al, 2016). This virus has been detected in other places around the world (Charles et al, 2016;Ergunay et al, 2017;Sadeghi et al, 2018;da Silva Neves et al, 2021). Airborne surveillance conducted in Thrace and Anatolia, two regions from Turkey recently identified the Merida-like virus Turkey (MERDLVT) (Ergunay et al, 2017).…”

Section: Detection Of the Merida-like Virus Ke-2017a In Pooled Specim...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Metagenomics analysis reveals presence of the Merida-like virus in Georgia

Potter-Birriel,

Pollio,

Knott

et al. 2023

Front. Microbiol.

Arbovirus surveillance is fundamental for the discovery of novel viruses and prevention of febrile vector-borne illnesses. Vector-borne pathogens can rapidly expand and adapt in new geographic and environmental conditions. In this study, metagenomic surveillance was conducted to identify novel viruses in the Country of Georgia. A total of 521 mosquitoes were captured near a military training facility and pooled from species Culex pipiens (Linnaeus) (87%) and Aedes albopictus (Skuse) (13%). We decided to further analyze the Culex pipiens mosquitoes, due to the more extensive number of samples collected. Our approach was to utilize an unbiased total RNA-seq for pathogen discovery in order to explore the mosquito virome. The viral reads from this analysis were mostly aligned to Insect-specific viruses from two main families, the Iflaviridae; a positive-stranded RNA virus and the Rhabdoviridae; a negative- and single-stranded RNA virus. Our pathogen discovery analysis revealed viral reads aligning to the Merida-like virus Turkey (MERDLVT) strain among the Rhabdoviridae. To further validate this result, we conducted a BLAST sequence comparison analysis of our samples with the MERDLVT strain. Our positive samples aligned to the MERDLVT strain with 96–100% sequence identity and 99.7–100% sequence coverage. A bootstrapped maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree was used to evaluate the evolutionary relationships among these positive pooled specimens with the (MERDLVT) strain. The Georgia samples clustered most closely with two strains from Turkey, the Merida-like virus KE-2017a isolate 139-1-21 and the Merida-like virus Turkey isolate P431. Collectively, these results show the presence of the MERDLVT strain in Georgia.