Abstract
Our knowledge of the genetic diversity and host ranges of viruses is fragmentary. This is particularly true for the Parvoviridae family. Genetic diversity studies of single stranded DNA viruses within this family have been largely focused on arthropod- and vertebrate-infecting species that cause diseases of humans and our domesticated animals: a focus that has biased our perception of parvovirus diversity. While metagenomics approaches could help rectify this bias, so too could transcriptomics studies. Large amounts of transcriptomic data are available for a diverse array of animal species and whenever this data has inadvertently been gathered from virus-infected individuals, it could contain detectable viral transcripts. We therefore performed a systematic search for parvovirus-related sequences (PRSs) within publicly available transcript, genome and protein databases and eleven new transcriptome datasets. This revealed 463 PRSs in the transcript databases of 118 animals. At least 41 of these PRSs are likely integrated within animal genomes in that they were also found within genomic sequence databases. Besides illuminating the ubiquity of parvoviruses, the number of parvoviral sequences discovered within public databases revealed numerous previously unknown parvovirus-host combinations; particularly in invertebrates. Our findings suggest that the host-ranges of extant parvoviruses might span the entire animal kingdom.
Highlights
IntroductionSpecies infecting vertebrates (which have, to date, mostly been birds and mammals), and the Densovirinae, which contains species infecting arthropods[10] (which have, to date, mostly been crustaceans and insects)
Species infecting vertebrates, and the Densovirinae, which contains species infecting arthropods[10]
We used 74 representative parvovirus genomes as queries (Supplementary Table S1) to perform BLASTX searches against the National Centre for Biotechnological Information (NCBI) non-redundant cDNA expressed sequence tag (EST), transcriptome shotgun assembly (TSA) and protein (Uniprot) databases[29,30]. We used these as queries to screen, eleven new transcriptomes generated from invertebrate datasets provided by N
Summary
Species infecting vertebrates (which have, to date, mostly been birds and mammals), and the Densovirinae, which contains species infecting arthropods[10] (which have, to date, mostly been crustaceans and insects). High throughput sequencing technologies and the advent of routine whole genome sequencing of eukaryotes have revealed the occurrence of “fossil” parvovirus sequences integrated into the genomes of multiple animals including those of humans While these integrated sequences reflect a history of parvovirus interactions with an unexpectedly broad range of animal hosts[20,21], the recent discovery of a densovirus associated with sea-star wasting disease supports the hypothesis that the host range of extant parvoviruses probably extends far beyond the major animal phyla in which they have already been detected[16]. The results presented here highlight the extraordinary diversity, abundance and ubiquity of expressed parvoviral sequences in numerous animal phyla, revealing previously unknown parvovirus-host associations– with invertebrates including arthropods, molluscs, annelids, nematodes, and cnidarians–and supporting the hypothesis that the collective host ranges of extant parvoviruses might span the entire animal kingdom
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