Abstract
The International Committee for Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) recognizes four species of tick-borne orbiviruses (TBOs): Chenuda virus, Chobar Gorge virus, Wad Medani virus and Great Island virus (genus Orbivirus, family Reoviridae). Nucleotide (nt) and amino acid (aa) sequence comparisons provide a basis for orbivirus detection and classification, however full genome sequence data were only available for the Great Island virus species. We report representative genome-sequences for the three other TBO species (virus isolates: Chenuda virus (CNUV); Chobar Gorge virus (CGV) and Wad Medani virus (WMV)). Phylogenetic comparisons show that TBOs cluster separately from insect-borne orbiviruses (IBOs). CNUV, CGV, WMV and GIV share low level aa/nt identities with other orbiviruses, in ‘conserved’ Pol, T2 and T13 proteins/genes, identifying them as four distinct virus-species. The TBO genome segment encoding cell attachment, outer capsid protein 1 (OC1), is approximately half the size of the equivalent segment from insect-borne orbiviruses, helping to explain why tick-borne orbiviruses have a ~1 kb smaller genome.
Highlights
The orbiviruses are icosahedral, non-enveloped dsRNA viruses belonging to the genus Orbivirus within the family Reoviridae
We report full genome sequences for representative isolates of the species Chenuda virus, Chobar Gorge virus and Wad Medani virus, providing a basis for further comparisons to other orbiviruses and the identification of novel tick-borne orbiviruses (TBOs) isolates and species
Genomic dsRNAs purified from these infected cell cultures, were analyzed by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) (Figure 1)
Summary
The orbiviruses are icosahedral, non-enveloped dsRNA viruses belonging to the genus Orbivirus within the family Reoviridae. The genus currently includes 22 species (representing 22 distinct virus serogroups) that have been recognized by the International Committee for the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) [1]. The orbiviruses have a wide host range that collectively includes domestic and wild ruminants, equines, marsupials, sloths, bats, birds and humans [1,9,10,11,12]. They infect and are transmitted by a range of hematophagus arthropods, including Culicoides, phlebotomines (sandflies), mosquitoes and ticks. The tick-borne orbivirus (TBOs) species include Chenuda virus, Chobar Gorge virus, Wad
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