Thread by @Paleovirologist

Short #Jingmenvirus primer - medium thread.

Jingmenvirus is a recently identified group of segmented RNA viruses that are phylogenetically linked to unsegmented flaviviruses. They appear to infect a wide range of animal hosts, including humans.

Jingmenviruses (JMVs) contain two #flavivirus-related segments, as well as additional segments of unknown origin. It is thought that JMVs evolved from unsegmented flaviviruses.
doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1…

The evolutionary significance of this shift to a segmented genome is unclear, but comparative studies of JMVs and flaviviruses may illuminating.

JMVs are also the only animal viruses known to employ a ‘multicomponent’ replication strategy in which individual genome segments are individually packaged into distinct virus particles.

npr.org/sections/goats…

Studies of Guiaco Culex virus - a JMV that infects mosquitoes - show that all segments have to meet in a host cell for replication to occur.

doi.org/10.1016/j.chom…

This strategy - not previously observed among animal viruses - has clear disadvantages (genomic information can more easily be lost) but its advantages are less clear.

System-level approaches may be needed to properly understand the phenomenon.

nature.com/articles/s4154…

In 2017, surveillance for tickborne diseases in China identified cases of human infection with JMVs. Alongshan virus is a tick-associated virus that was detected in a group of patients with febrile illness in Mongolia.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Much remains to be learned about Alongshan and other tick-associated JMVs with regard to their impacts on humans and livestock. They have been detected in a broad range of mammalian hosts as well as in ticks.

academic.oup.com/ve/article/6/2…

Since the discovery of the prototype species (Jingmen tick virus) in 2014, numerous additional JMV species have been described (pictured below). Currently we know relatively little about these viruses, but comparative studies of their genomes may be instructive.

Flavivirus-GLUE provides open resources for comparative analysis of JMVs:

giffordlabcvr.github.io/Flavivirus-GLU…

The tree shown was constructed using Flavivirus-GLUE and represents all currently known JMV species in GenBank (if any are missing please let me know).

Flavivirus-GLUE is also a public repository of info. about endogenous viral elements (EVEs) derived from flaviviruses.

JMV-derived EVEs identified in midges and pond skaters (pictured) can help calibrate the timeline of JMV evolution.

shorturl.at/clJ49

Mapping the flavivirus fossil record we identified a novel group of JMV-like elements in fish (including the bizarre 'tube-eye', pictured) showing that JMV-like genetic material has been incorporated into vertebrate genomes.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

This lineage, which we provisionally named “X2" implies the the existence of an ancient lineage of jingmenvirus-like viruses in vertebrates.

Because some copepods parasite fish this suggests the existence of dual host, jingmen-virus like viruses that are transmitted between fish by #copepod parasites.

Such viruses may impact #aquaculture systems in which viral infections are a major concern.

enaca.org