Department of Microbiology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
Department of Biology, Estuary and Ocean Science Center, San Francisco State University, Tiburon, CA 94920, USA.
Viruses. 2020 Nov 20;12(11):1332. doi: 10.3390/v12111332.
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) is a condition that has affected asteroids for over 120 years, yet mechanistic understanding of this wasting etiology remains elusive. We investigated temporal virome variation in two specimens that wasted in the absence of external stimuli and two specimens that did not experience SSWD for the duration of our study, and compared viromes of wasting lesion margin tissues to both artificial scar margins and grossly normal tissues over time. Global assembly of all SSWD-affected tissue libraries resulted in 24 viral genome fragments represented in >1 library. Genome fragments mostly matched densoviruses and picornaviruses with fewer matching nodaviruses, and a sobemovirus. Picornavirus-like and densovirus-like genome fragments were most similar to viral genomes recovered in metagenomic study of other marine invertebrates. Read recruitment revealed only two picornavirus-like genome fragments that recruited from only SSWD-affected specimens, but neither was unique to wasting lesions. Wasting lesion margin reads recruited to a greater number of viral genotypes (i.e., richness) than did either scar tissue and grossly normal tissue reads. Taken together, these data suggest that no single viral genome fragment was associated with SSWD. Rather, wasting lesion margins may generally support viral proliferation.
海星消瘦症（SSWD）是一种影响海星超过 120 年的疾病，但对于这种消瘦病因的机制理解仍然难以捉摸。我们研究了在没有外部刺激的情况下消瘦的两个标本和在我们的研究期间没有经历 SSWD 的两个标本的时间病毒组变化，并随着时间的推移将消瘦病变边缘组织的病毒组与人工疤痕边缘和大体正常组织的病毒组进行了比较。所有受 SSWD 影响的组织文库的全局组装产生了 24 个病毒基因组片段，这些片段在 >1 个文库中都有代表。基因组片段主要与浓核病毒和小 RNA 病毒匹配，与小 RNA 病毒和 sobemovirus 匹配较少。类小 RNA 病毒和类浓核病毒基因组片段与从其他海洋无脊椎动物宏基因组研究中恢复的病毒基因组最相似。读段招募仅揭示了两个从仅受 SSWD 影响的标本中招募的类小 RNA 病毒基因组片段，但都不是消瘦病变所特有的。消瘦病变边缘的读段比疤痕组织和大体正常组织的读段招募到更多的病毒基因型（即丰富度）。总的来说，这些数据表明没有单个病毒基因组片段与 SSWD 相关。相反，消瘦病变边缘可能普遍支持病毒增殖。
