Multipartite Virus Found For The First Time In Mosquitoes
A new kind of virus is making scientists rethink how infection works. This virus, found in mosquitoes, is broken up into several pieces. If the mosquito doesn’t come into contact with at least a few pieces, it won’t get infected. This shakes up our existing knowledge, which is that once you come in contact with any part of a virus you get the full infection.
The revelation comes from a scientific team led by researchers at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). The team is participating in a global effort to monitor and prepare for outbreaks of unknown viral diseases.
“One area we are focused on is the identification and characterization of novel viruses,” said Gustavo Palacios, Ph.D., who directs USAMRIID’s Center for Genome Sciences.”This study allowed us to utilize all our tools—and even though this virus does not appear to affect mammals, we are continuing to refine those tools so we can be better prepared for the next outbreak of disease that could have an impact on human health.”
Dr. Palacios is the senior author of a study that appeared in the journal Cell Host & Microbe
, in an article entitled, A Multicomponent Animal Virus Isolated from Mosquitoes. The article reports that a newly discovered multipartite virus, called (GCXV), was isolated from several species of mosquitoes in Central and South America.The virus does not appear to be a human pathogen, or even a mammalian one. However, deep sequencing indicated that GCXV belongs to a group of segmented viruses called Jingmenviruses, which were first discovered in 2014. In the current study, a Jingmenvirus was found in the blood of a nonhuman primate, in this case a Ugandan red colobus monkey.
“GCXV belongs to a diverse clade of segmented viruses (Jingmenvirus) related to the prototypically unsegmented Flaviviridae,” wrote the authors of the Cell Host & Microbe article. “The GCXV genome comprises five segments, each of which appears to be separately packaged. The smallest segment is not required for replication, and its presence is variable in natural infections.”
Experts believe that the most likely infectious viruses to make the jump to humans are those that are already circulating in other mammals, especially nonhuman primates. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the monkey virus evaluated in the current study shared a segmented common ancestor with GCXV. However, researchers don’t yet know if all Jingmenviruses are multicomponent like the Guaico Culex virus. It is also not known whether the Jingmenvirus isolated from the monkey has a pathogenic effect.
Vincent Racaniello, at Columbia University, says thousands of viruses are being discovered each year. “We finally have the tools to find them,” he says. But he also adds that there is so much that we don’t know, and right now, the more we can learn about viruses, the less the chance of us being hit with something unexpected.
