Metaviromics Reveals Unknown Viral Diversity in the Biting Midge <i>Culicoides impunctatus</i>.

ABSTRACT: Biting midges (Culicoides species) are vectors of arboviruses and were responsible for the emergence and spread of Schmallenberg virus (SBV) in Europe in 2011 and are likely to be involved in the emergence of other arboviruses in Europe. Improved surveillance and better understanding of risks require a better understanding of the circulating viral diversity in these biting insects. In this study, we expand the sequence space of RNA viruses by identifying a number of novel RNA viruses from Culicoides impunctatus (biting midge) using a meta-transcriptomic approach. A novel metaviromic pipeline called MetaViC was developed specifically to identify novel virus sequence signatures from high throughput sequencing (HTS) datasets in the absence of a known host genome. MetaViC

SUBMITTER: Modha S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6784199 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature