Abstract
DNA viruses comprise a wide array of genome structures and infect diverse host species. To date, most studies of DNA viruses have focused on those with the strongest disease associations. Accordingly, there has been a marked lack of sampling of DNA viruses from invertebrates. Bulk RNA sequencing has resulted in the discovery of a myriad of novel RNA viruses, and herein we used this methodology to identify actively transcribing DNA viruses in meta-transcriptomic libraries of diverse invertebrate species. Our analysis revealed high levels of phylogenetic diversity in DNA viruses, including 13 species from the Parvoviridae, Circoviridae, and Genomoviridae families of single-stranded DNA virus families, and six double-stranded DNA virus species from the Nudiviridae, Polyomaviridae, and Herpesviridae, for which few invertebrate viruses have been identified to date. By incorporating the sequence of a “blank” experimental control we also highlight the importance of reagent contamination in metagenomic studies. In sum, this work expands our knowledge of the diversity and evolution of DNA viruses and illustrates the utility of meta-transcriptomic data in identifying organisms with DNA genomes.
Highlights
Invertebrates harbour an enormous diversity of RNA viruses that are ancestral to many of those found in vertebrates [1,2]
Our analysis revealed the presence of 16 novel DNA virus sequences from a range of virus families as well as three new variants of known virus species (Table 1)
The presence of these novel viruses will need to be confirmed by future PCR, that we identified variants of known viruses at relatively high abundance, such as Periplaneta fuliginosa densovirus variant
Summary
Invertebrates harbour an enormous diversity of RNA viruses that are ancestral to many of those found in vertebrates [1,2]. About the diversity of DNA viruses carried by invertebrates. There has recently been an effort to characterise more invertebrate RNA viruses [1], as well as studies documenting an abundance of DNA bacteriophage [3,4], there is relatively little information on the biodiversity of DNA viruses in these copious host organisms. The advent of metagenomic next-generation sequencing has transformed virus discovery [1,5], expanding our knowledge of the diversity of viruses in many environments [6], and providing rich information on virus evolution [1,5,7].
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