Bunyaviruses in protozoa?

A Novel Bunyavirus-Like Virus of Trypanosomatid Protist Parasites

Natalia S. Akopyants^a,

Lon-Fye Lye^a,

Deborah E. Dobson^a,

Julius Lukeš^b,^c,

Stephen M. Beverley^a

ABSTRACT

We report here the sequences for all three segments of a novel RNA virus (LepmorLBV1) from the insect trypanosomatid parasite Leptomonas moramango. This virus belongs to a newly discovered group of bunyavirus-like elements termed Leishbunyaviruses (LBV), the first discovered from protists related to arboviruses infecting humans.

OK, seriously interesting viruses – BECAUSE “…The L. moramango virus thus resembles a group of related viruses discovered recently in the closely related human parasite Leishmania”…which I will note, whose phylogenetic affinity to other higher eukaryotes is via a relationship to trypanonosomes, and then – Euglena?? Which is an alga….

Seriously: a bunya-like virus found in a protozoan whose closest affinity to other hosts of bunyaviruses is via algae??

This pushes the possible evolutionary origin of bunyaviruses faaaaaar back, to possibly a billion years or so, when fungi were separating from protists from algae…..

There is another option, however: I note the Leptomonas sp. is a parasite of insects. It is of course worth noting that the Leishmania and other related parasites infecting mammals are also all arthropod-vectored – which could imply an origin in arthropods.

Which makes good sense, considering these beasties date back less than 600 million years or so – which is still pretty good for a virus?!

This entry was posted on 25 August, 2016 at 20:25 and is filed under Evolution, General, Teaching, 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.

ViroBlogy