Back

A new clade of pararetroviruses distantly related to hepadnaviruses and nackednaviruses

Buigues, J.; Vinals, A.; Martinez-Recio, R.; Monros, J. S.; Cuevas, J. M.; Sanjuan, R.

2024-08-04 evolutionary biology
10.1101/2024.08.02.606351 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Group VII of the Baltimore classification comprises reverse-transcribing, non-integrated DNA viruses, also known as pararetroviruses. These include the hepadnaviruses, a family of small enveloped DNA viruses that infect vertebrates, but also a sister family of non-enveloped fish viruses, the nackednaviruses. Here we describe the complete sequence of a new pararetrovirus found in the feces of an insectivorous bat. This virus encodes a core protein and a reverse transcriptase but no envelope protein. A database search identified a viral sequence from a permafrost sample as its closest relative. The two viruses form a cluster that occupies a basal phylogenetic position relative to hepadnaviruses and nackednaviruses, with an estimated divergence time of 500 million years. These findings may lead to the definition of a new viral family and support the hypothesis that ancestral animal pararetroviruses were non-enveloped.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.