ViroBlogy

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“Endogenous viral elements (EVEs) derived from RNA viruses with no DNA stage are rare, especially those where the parental viruses possess single-strand positive-sense (ssRNA +) genomes. Here we provide evidence that EVEs that share a sequence similarity to ssRNA + viruses of plants are integrated into the genomes of a number of insects, including mosquito, fruit flies, bees, ant, silkworm, pea aphid, Monarch butterfly, and wasps. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis places these EVEs as divergent relatives of the Virgaviridae and three currently unclassified plant viral species.”

I have covered this before, in ViroBlogy, (and here, in 2007)as an interesting and probably under-appreciated phenomenon.  I note Eddie Holmes and colleagues have now taken it much, much further – which incidentally lends significant credence to my supposition that virus/vector/plant coevolution was probably a fair bit more intimate than has been supposed, with the newly-emerged (in evolutionary terms) insects and their viruses meeting terrestrial plants and THEIR viruses.  And mixing everything up, as I have speculated elsewhere (Origins of Viruses).

I thank Jean-Marie Verchot for drawing my attention to this!

See on www.sciencedirect.com

Tags: endogenous, Evolution, RNA virus, virus

This entry was posted on 5 June, 2012 at 10:04 and is filed under Evolution, General Virology, Viruses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.