Characterization of the virome associated with Haemagogus mosquitoes in Trinidad, West Indies

Renee Ali,Christine V F Carrington,Chinnadurai Chinnaraja,Azad Mohammed,Adesh Ramsubhag,Jayaraman Jayaraj,David W Severson

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-95842-6

Renee Ali, Christine V F Carrington + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95842-6

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Abstract

Currently, there are increasing concerns about the possibility of a new epidemic due to emerging reports of Mayaro virus (MAYV) fever outbreaks in areas of South and Central America. Haemagogus mosquitoes, the primary sylvan vectors of MAYV are poorly characterized and a better understanding of the mosquito’s viral transmission dynamics and interactions with MAYV and other microorganisms would be important in devising effective control strategies. In this study, a metatranscriptomic based approach was utilized to determine the prevalence of RNA viruses in field-caught mosquitoes morphologically identified as Haemagogus janthinomys from twelve (12) forest locations in Trinidad, West Indies. Known insect specific viruses including the Phasi Charoen-like and Humaiata-Tubiacanga virus dominated the virome of the mosquitoes throughout sampling locations while other viruses such as the avian leukosis virus, MAYV and several unclassified viruses had a narrower distribution. Additionally, assembled contigs from the Ecclesville location suggests the presence of a unique uncharacterized picorna-like virus. Mapping of RNA sequencing reads to reference mitochondrial sequences of potential feeding host animals showed hits against avian and rodent sequences, which putatively adds to the growing body of evidence of a potentially wide feeding host-range for the Haemagogus mosquito vector.

Highlights

There are increasing concerns about the possibility of a new epidemic due to emerging reports of Mayaro virus (MAYV) fever outbreaks in areas of South and Central America
A subsequent barcoding study conducted on Hg. janthinomys from Trinidad based on sequencing of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene and the internally transcribed spacer region 2 (ITS2) showed that the population had three distinct genotypes that may represent a species complex, but this needs to be confirmed by additional studies (Ali et al, unpublished data)
The Wolbachia contig sequences are available at https://zenodo.org/record/4932469#.YMQbQKhKi01. This is the first report on the virome of any Haemagogus mosquito species and provides important baseline data on a range of viruses associated with these mosquitoes

Summary

Introduction

There are increasing concerns about the possibility of a new epidemic due to emerging reports of Mayaro virus (MAYV) fever outbreaks in areas of South and Central America. The advent of deep sequencing technologies has made the detection and quantification of viral agents much easier and affordable This technological advancement is contributing to increased discovery rates and a better understanding of uncharacterized viruses, including many insect-associated viruses of human health importance[3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Microbiome-based analyses allow for the elucidation of interactions among viruses and other biological systems associated with mosquitoes and their effect on vector competence and transmission of infectious viral agents. The mosquito Haemagogus janthinomys (Hg. janthinomys) has been reported as the primary vector in the transmission of the Mayaro virus (MAYV), an emerging alphavirus endemic to regions of South and Central America[12,13,14,15]. We used a transcriptomic-based approach to map the RNA virome of wild caught adult female mosquitoes morphologically identified as Hg. janthinomys from twelve forested locations in Trinidad, West Indies

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