Abstract
Fungi constituting the Entomophthora muscae species complex (members of subphylum Entomophthoromycotina, phylum Zoopagamycota) commonly kill their insect hosts and manipulate host behaviors in the process. In this study, we made use of public transcriptome data to identify and characterize eight new species of mitoviruses associated with several different E. muscae isolates. Mitoviruses are simple RNA viruses that replicate in host mitochondria and are frequently found in more phylogenetically apical fungi (members of subphylum Glomeromyoctina, phylum Mucoromycota, phylum Basidiomycota and phylum Ascomycota) as well as in plants. E. muscae is the first fungus from phylum Zoopagomycota, and thereby the most phylogenetically basal fungus, found to harbor mitoviruses to date. Multiple UGA (Trp) codons are found not only in each of the new mitovirus sequences from E. muscae but also in mitochondrial core-gene coding sequences newly assembled from E. muscae transcriptome data, suggesting that UGA (Trp) is not a rarely used codon in the mitochondria of this fungus. The presence of mitoviruses in these basal fungi has possible implications for the evolution of these viruses.
Highlights
The classification scheme for kingdom Fungi currently applied by the NationalCenter for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; Bethesda, MD, USA) includes eight major phyla: Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, Mucoromycota, Zoopagomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Chytridiomycota, Cryptomycota, and Microsporidia, in approximate order of increasing time since they emerged as divergent taxa [1,2]
As described in detail below, we subsequently discovered a number of apparent mitovirus sequences from that transcriptome study by searching for mitovirus-like sequences within the Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly (TSA) database at NationalCenter for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
As a part of this work, we have identified additional strains of these mitoviruses by assembling sequence reads from two other transcriptome studies of E. muscae, as obtained from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database at NCBI
Summary
The classification scheme for kingdom Fungi currently applied by the National. Mitoviruses are currently classified in genus Mitovirus, family Narnaviridae. They have small plus-strand RNA genomes and replicate persistently in host cell mitochondria [3,6,7,8].
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