Small but mighty: old and new parvoviruses of veterinary significance

Abstract

In line with the Latin expression “sed parva forti” meaning “small but mighty,” the family Parvoviridae contains many of the smallest known viruses, some of which result in fatal or debilitating infections. In recent years, advances in metagenomic viral discovery techniques have dramatically increased the identification of novel parvoviruses in both diseased and healthy individuals. While some of these discoveries have solved etiologic mysteries of well-described diseases in animals, many of the newly discovered parvoviruses appear to cause mild or no disease, or disease associations remain to be established. With the increased use of animal parvoviruses as vectors for gene therapy and oncolytic treatments in humans, it becomes all the more important to understand the diversity, pathogenic potential, and evolution of this diverse family of viruses. In this review, we discuss parvoviruses infecting vertebrate animals, with a special focus on pathogens of veterinary significance and viruses discovered within the last four years.

Prevalence and pathology of equine parvovirus-hepatitis in racehorses from New York racetracks

“…Two large open reading frames are predicted to encode a nonstructural protein (NS) and a capsid protein (VP), although a detailed transcriptome profile has yet to be done for EqPV-H [ 1 ]. To date, EqPV-H is the only member of Copiparvovirus known to cause clinical disease [ 18 ].…”

Comparative analysis reveals the long-term co-evolutionary history of parvoviruses and vertebrates

“…Phylogenetic reconstructions indicate that this domain was present ancestrally and has been convergently lost in the Aveparvovirus and Amdoparvovirus genera ( Fig. 4c ) [2, 24].…”

“…Parvovirinae genera also show variation in their gene expression strategies through differential promoter usage and alternative splicing. Members of the Proto- and Dependoparvovirus genera use two to three separate transcriptional promoters whereas the Amdo-, Erythro- , and Boca- genera express all genes from a single promoter and use genus-specific read-through mechanisms to produce alternative transcripts [2, 11]. Interestingly, both the Proto- and Dependoparvovirus genera utilise the first of these expression strategies despite being relatively distantly related, suggesting that the use of separate promoters may be the ancestral strategy within the subfamily Parvovirinae , with other genera independently acquiring mechanisms to express multiple genes from a single promoter ( Fig 3c ).…”

“…Phylogenies reveal two robustly supported sub-clades within the “Neoproto” clade, one contains the ‘classical’ protoparvoviruses isolated in the 1960s such as Kilham rat virus (KRV) and carnivore protoparvovirus [2], while the other contains more recently identified viruses [34] ( Fig. S7h, S8c ).…”

“…Parvoviruses (family Parvoviridae ) are a diverse group of small, non-enveloped DNA viruses that infect a broad and phylogenetically diverse range of animal species [1, 2]. The family includes numerous important pathogens of humans and domesticated species, including erythroparvovirus B19 (fifth disease) [3], carnivore protoparvovirus 1 (canine parvovirus) [4] and carnivore amdoparvovirus 1 (Aleutian mink disease; AMDV) [5].…”