The Discovery Of Arthropod Associated Rhabdoviruses From Various Regions In China With Further Inferences On Their Macroevolution

The family Rhabdoviridae belonging to the Mononegavirales has a wide host range. There are 11 genera in the family based on the current ICTV guideline. Many rahbdoviruses can cause human disease. In addition, there are many rhabdoviral agents that can result in damage of the agriculture, stock fanning and fishery industry. Most of the rahbdoviruses are transmitted via arthropod.Using the second generation high throughput sequencing technology, our study detected the rhabdovirus from the tick, fly, mosquito, spider and cockroach in several regions of China, which includes Xinjiang and Hubei.A total of 18 new viruses were discovered, most of which are with complete coding sequences.1) two new sigma viruses were discovered in flies(Musca domestica), which broaden the host range of the genus sigmavirus, and provide useful data to sort out the relationship between the sigmavirus and their hosts. Our study showed there was no codivergence between the sigmavirus and their hosts, instead, frequent host-switching were the major driving force.2) Five new rhabdoviruses were discovered in four tick species, which may be defined as a new genus based on the genomic structure, sequence distance, phylogenetic analysis results. These new tick-borne viruses are significant to the putative arboviral human infectious disease.3) Two new rhabdoviruses which can be defined as new genus were found in the flies. Relatively, these viruses were of the highest similarity with the plant rhabdovirus.4) A number of new viruses with similar features were discovered in fly, tick, cockroach and spider. The blastx analysis showed these viruses had the feature of mononegavirales RdRp domain but displayed major difference in gene distance, phylogeny and genomic structure. So these new viruses designated rhabdo-like virus may be defined a new viral family.5) The discovery of the rhabdo-like virus is helpful to trace the evolutionary history of the rhabdovirus, and furthermore, on the mononegavirales. Our study demonstrate the role of virus reservoir for the arthropod. The evolution of the arthropod, resulted in the multiple evolutionary paths of various rhabdovirues, which include blood-sucking-arthropod-borne virus, phytophagous-arthropod-virus and lyssavirus.