| Abstract [eng] |
Wuhan mosquito virus 6 (WuMV-6) is an RNA virus that belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae family and is related to viruses like Influenza. Although by now WuMV-6 has only been found to infect mosquitoes, it has been identified in multiple studies all over the world. Previous study has found that WuMV-6 surface protein evolves faster at amino acid level than the rest of its’ proteins. It has also spread globally in a short period of time. This suggests that the global spread might be facilitated by a mobile vertebrate host. The goal of this study was to conduct phylogeographic analysis of WuMV-6 and other insect-specific viruses and arboviruses to infer what variables are influencing its’ spread. By applying continuous and discrete phylogeography methods, we identified that distance-based predictors significantly influence the number of transitions between sampling regions. It was also inferred that the number of bird farms and the percentage higher percentage of forest area in the region positively correlates to more migrations, but does not explain the whole variation. Similarly to previous studies of avian Influenza (IAV) H5N1, selective pressure analysis of WuMV-6 suggests that its surface protein gp64 is evolving faster at amino acid level than other proteins. However, the dN/dS values of WuMV-6 proteins, including gp64, were comparable to those observed across the rest of the genome and to those of IAV proteins. Comparison of arboviral and insect-specific virus proteins within the Flaviviridae family showed generally similar evolutionary rates, although the Culex pipiens flavivirus capsid protein exhibited elevated amino acid divergence and higher dN/dS values. However, overall comparison between virus surface and inner proteins did not show significant difference. To address the variability in WuMV-6 genomes, pipeline for mixed viral lineage genome assembly was developed. 39% of reassembled WuMV-6 genomes were above the set Shannon entropy threshold, suggesting either low sample quality or presence of more than one viral lineage in the sample. |
