Marmota himalayana in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau as a special host for bi-segmented and unsegmented picobirnaviruses.

ABSTRACT: Wildlife has been considered the main source of novel viruses causing emerging infectious diseases. Marmota himalayana is endemic to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China. Here, based on a high-throughput method using Illumina RNA sequencing, we studied the RNA virome of M. himalayana and discovered multiple novel viruses, especially picobirnaviruses (PBVs), which have a bi-segmented genome and belong to the family Picobirnaviridae. A total of 63% of the viral contigs corresponded to PBVs, comprising 274 segment 1 and 56 segment 2 sequences. Unexpectedly, four unsegmented PBV genomes were also detected and confirmed by PCR and resequencing. According to the phylogenetic analysis, the following nine PBV assortment types are proposed: C1:GI, C2:GIV, C4:GI, C4:GV, C5:GI, C7:GI, C8:GIV, C8:GV and

SUBMITTER: Luo XL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5841229 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature