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Journal of Virology, June 2007, p. 6491-6501, Vol. 81, No. 12
0022-538X/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.02702-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Genomic and Morphological Features of a Banchine Polydnavirus: Comparison with Bracoviruses and Ichnoviruses ^{, ,||}

Renée Lapointe,^1,, Kohjiro Tanaka,^2,,¶ Walter E. Barney,² James B. Whitfield,³ Jonathan C. Banks,^3,# Catherine Béliveau,¹ Don Stoltz,⁴ Bruce A. Webb,^2* and Michel Cusson^1*

Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Laurentian Forestry Centre, 1055 du PEPS, Quebec, Quebec G1V 4C7, Canada,¹ Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546-0091,² Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801,³ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4H7, Canada⁴

Received 7 December 2006/ Accepted 2 April 2007

Many ichneumonid and braconid endoparasitoids inject a polydnavirus (PDV) into their caterpillar hosts during oviposition. The viral entities carried by wasps of these families are referred to as "ichnoviruses" (IVs) and "bracoviruses" (BVs), respectively. All IV genomes characterized to date are found in wasps of the subfamily Campopleginae; consequently, little is known about PDVs found in wasps of the subfamily Banchinae, the only other ichneumonid taxon thus far shown to carry these viruses. Here we report on the genome sequence and virion morphology of a PDV carried by the banchine parasitoid Glypta fumiferanae. With an aggregate genome size of 290 kb and 105 genome segments, this virus displays a degree of genome segmentation far greater than that reported for BVs or IVs. The size range of its genome segments is also lower than those in the latter two groups. As reported for other PDVs, the predicted open reading frames of this virus cluster into gene families, including the protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) and viral ankyrin (ank) families, but phylogenetic analysis indicates that ank genes of the G. fumiferanae virus are not embedded within the IV lineage, while its PTPs and those of BVs form distinct clusters. The banchine PDV genome also encodes a novel family of NTPase-like proteins displaying a pox-D5 domain. The unique genomic features of the first banchine virus examined, along with the morphological singularities of its virions (IV-like nucleocapsids, but enveloped in groups like some of the BVs), suggest that they could have an origin distinct from those of IVs and BVs.

Published ahead of print on 11 April 2007.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/.

^|| This is publication no. 07-08-045 of the University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station.

R.L. and K.T. contributed equally to this work.

Present address: Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Atlantic Forestry Centre, P.O. Box 4000, Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5P7, Canada.

^¶ Present address: Institute for Biological Resources and Functions, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan.

^# Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand.