An in silico analysis revealed a novel evolutionary lineage of putative mitoviruses

JACQUAT, ANDRÉS GUSTAVO; ULLA, SOFÍA BELÉN; DEBAT, HUMBERTO JULIO; MUÑOZ-ADALIA, EMIGDIO JORDÁN; THEUMER, MARTÍN GUSTAVO; PEDRAJAS, MARÍA DOLORES GARCÍA; DAMBOLENA, JOSÉ SEBASTIÁN

ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2022

1462-2912

itoviruses (family Mitoviridae) are small capsid-less RNA viruses that replicate in the mitochondria of fungi and plants. However, to date, the only authentic animal mitovirus infecting an insect was identified as Lutzomyia longipalpis mitovirus 1 (LulMV1). Public databases of transcriptomic studies from several animals may be a good source for identifying the often missed mitoviruses. Consequently, a search of mitovirus-like transcripts at the NCBI transcriptome shotgun assembly (TSA) library, and a search for the mitoviruses previously recorded at the NCBI non-redundant (nr) protein sequences library, were performed in order to identify new mitovirus-like sequences associated with animals. In total, 10 new putative mitoviruses were identified in the TSA database and 8 putative mitoviruses in the nr protein database. To our knowledge, these results represent the first evidence of putative mitoviruses associated with poriferan, cnidarians, echinoderms, crustaceans, myriapods and arach