Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 30;17(6):e0269881. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269881. eCollection 2022.
Avian haemosporidian parasites can cause malaria-like symptoms in their hosts and have been implicated in the demise of some bird species. The newly described Matryoshka RNA viruses (MaRNAV1 and MaRNAV2) infect haemosporidian parasites that in turn infect their vertebrate hosts. MaRNAV2 was the first RNA virus discovered associated with parasites of the genus Leucocytozoon. By analyzing metatranscriptomes from the NCBI SRA database with local sequence alignment tools, we detected two novel RNA viruses; we describe them as MaRNAV3 associated with Leucocytozoon and MaRNAV4 associated with Parahaemoproteus. MaRNAV3 had ~59% amino acid identity to the RNA-dependent RNA-polymerase (RdRp) of MaRNAV1 and ~63% amino acid identity to MaRNAV2. MaRNAV4 had ~44% amino acid identity to MaRNAV1 and ~47% amino acid identity to MaRNAV2. These findings lead us to hypothesize that MaRNAV_like viruses are widespread and tightly associated with the order Haemosporida since they have been described in human Plasmodium vivax, and now two genera of avian haemosporidians.
禽类血孢子虫寄生虫可以在其宿主中引起类似疟疾的症状，并被认为是一些鸟类物种灭绝的原因。新描述的 Matryoshka RNA 病毒（MaRNAV1 和 MaRNAV2）感染血孢子虫寄生虫，而寄生虫又感染其脊椎动物宿主。MaRNAV2 是第一个与 Leucocytozoon 属寄生虫相关的 RNA 病毒。通过使用本地序列比对工具分析来自 NCBI SRA 数据库的宏转录组，我们检测到两种新型 RNA 病毒；我们将它们描述为与 Leucocytozoon 相关的 MaRNAV3 和与 Parahaemoproteus 相关的 MaRNAV4。MaRNAV3 的 RNA 依赖性 RNA 聚合酶（RdRp）与 MaRNAV1 的氨基酸同一性约为 59%，与 MaRNAV2 的氨基酸同一性约为 63%。MaRNAV4 与 MaRNAV1 的氨基酸同一性约为 44%，与 MaRNAV2 的氨基酸同一性约为 47%。这些发现使我们假设 MaRNAV 样病毒广泛存在并且与 Haemosporida 目密切相关，因为它们已在人类疟原虫 vivax 和现在的两种禽类血孢子虫寄生虫中被描述。
