metagenomics
Genetic Diversity and EvolutionVirome of Bat Guano from Nine Northern California RoostsCharacterizing the bat virome is important for understanding viral diversity and detecting viral spillover between animal species. Using an unbiased metagenomics method, we characterize the virome in guano collected from multiple roosts of common Northern California bat species. We describe several novel viral genomes and report the detection of viruses with close relatives reported in other bat species, likely reflecting cross-species...
Genetic Diversity and Evolution | SpotlightPartitiviruses Infecting Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti Exhibit Efficient Biparental Vertical TransmissionGalbut virus is a recently discovered partitivirus that is extraordinarily common in wild populations of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. Like for most viruses discovered through metagenomics, most of the basic biological questions about this virus remain unanswered. We found that galbut virus, along with a closely related partitivirus found in...
Genetic Diversity and EvolutionPhytovirome Analysis of Wild Plant Populations: Comparison of Double-Stranded RNA and Virion-Associated Nucleic Acid Metagenomic ApproachesThere are today significant knowledge gaps on phytovirus populations and on the drivers impacting them but also on the comparative performance-methodological approaches for their study. We used and compared two viral sequence enrichment approaches, double-stranded RNAs (dsRNA) and virion-associated nucleic acids (VANA), for phytovirome description in complex pools representative of the most prevalent plant species in unmanaged and...
Genetic Diversity and Evolution | SpotlightEffect of Geographic Isolation on the Nasal Virome of Indigenous ChildrenExtreme geographic and cultural isolation can still be found in some indigenous South American villages. Such isolation may be expected to limit the introduction of otherwise common and widely distributed viruses. Very small population sizes may also result in rapid local viral extinction due to a lack of seronegative subjects to maintain transmission chains for rapidly cleared viruses. We compared the viruses in the nasal passages of...
- Genetic Diversity and EvolutionInsights into Circovirus Host Range from the Genomic Fossil Record
Advances in DNA sequencing have dramatically increased the rate at which new viruses are being identified. However, the host species associations of most virus sequences identified in metagenomic samples are difficult to determine. Our analysis indicates that viruses proposed to infect vertebrates (in some cases being linked to human disease) may in fact be restricted to arthropod hosts. The detection of these sequences in vertebrate...
- Genetic Diversity and EvolutionA Diverse Range of Novel RNA Viruses in Geographically Distinct Honey Bee Populations