A Novel Picornavirus Discovered in White Leg Shrimp Penaeus vannamei

• Published in: Viruses Vol. 13; no. 12; p. 2381
• Main Authors: Liu, Shuang, Xu, Tingting, Wang, Chong, Jia, Tianchang, Zhang, Qingli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 28.11.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Animals; China; Dicistroviridae; Farming; Genome, Viral; Genomes; Genomics; Litopenaeus vannamei; Mass spectrometry; Mass spectroscopy; Morphology; Mortality; New species; Nucleotide sequence; Pathogenicity; Penaeidae - virology; Penaeus vannamei; Penaeus vannamei picorna viruses (PvPV); Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Physical characteristics; Picornavirales; Picornaviridae - classification; Picornaviridae - genetics; Picornaviridae - isolation & purification; Picornaviridae - ultrastructure; Proteins; Protocol; Reverse transcription; RNA polymerase; RNA viruses; Scientific imaging; shrimp; Tegument; Viral Proteins - genetics; Viruses; China; Beijing China; United States > US; Penaeus vannamei; shrimp; Dicistroviridae; Penaeus vannamei picorna viruses (PvPV); Picornavirales
• ISSN: 1999-4915; 1999-4915
• DOI: 10.3390/v13122381

Global shrimp farming is increasingly threatened by various emerging viruses. In the present study, a novel picornavirus, picornavirus ( PV), was discovered in moribund White leg shrimp ( ) collected from farm ponds in China in 2015. Similar to most picornaviruses, PV is non-enveloped RNA virus, with a particle diameter of approximately 30 nm. The sequence of the positive single-stranded RNA genome with a length of 10,550 nts was characterized by using genome sequencing and reverse transcription PCR. The existence of PV related proteins was further proved by confirmation of viral amino acid sequences, using mass spectrometry analysis. Phylogenetic analysis based on the full-length genomic sequence revealed that PV was more closely related to the Wenzhou shrimp virus 8 than to any other dicistroviruses in the order . Genomic sequence conservative domain prediction analysis showed that the PV genome encoded a large tegument protein UL36, which was unique among the known dicistroviruses and different from other dicistroviruses. According to these molecular features, we proposed that PV is a new species in the family . This study reported the first whole-genome sequence of a novel and distinct picornavirus in crustaceans, PV, and suggests that further studies of PV would be helpful in understanding its evolution and potential pathogenicity, as well as in developing diagnostic techniques.