Family: Aliusviridae

Jens H. Kuhn, Nolwenn M. Dheilly, Sandra Junglen, Sofia Paraskevopoulou (Σοφία Παρασκευοπούλου), Mang Shi (施莽), and Nicholas Di Paola

The citation for this ICTV Report chapter is the summary to be published as Kuhn et al., (2023):

ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Jingchuvirales 2023, Journal of General Virology 2023, (in press)

Corresponding author: Nicholas Di Paola, nicholas.dipaola.civ@health.mil 
Edited by: Jens H. Kuhn and Stuart G. Siddell
Posted: November 2023

Summary

Aliusviridae is a family of negative-sense RNA viruses with genomes of 9.9–15.3 kb (Table 1.Aliusviridae). These viruses have been found in insects in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. The family includes two genera with 12 species for 12 viruses. The aliusvirid genome contains two to four open reading frames (ORFs) that encode a glycoprotein (GP), nucleoprotein (NP), a large (L) protein containing RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and/or proteins of unknown function.

Table 1.Aliusviridae Characteristics of members of the family Aliusviridae

Virion

Morphology

Unknown.

Nucleic acid

Aliusvirids have nonsegmented linear negative-sense RNA genomes with total lengths of 9.9–15.3 kb (Li et al., 2015, Schoonvaere et al., 2016, Shi et al., 2016, Harvey et al., 2019, Käfer et al., 2019, Wang et al., 2019, Han et al., 2020, Wu et al., 2020, Chang et al., 2021).

Genome organization and replication

Aliusvirid genomes have two to four ORFs that encode a GP, NP, and L protein, and/or proteins of unknown function (Li et al., 2015, Schoonvaere et al., 2016, Shi et al., 2016, Harvey et al., 2019, Käfer et al., 2019, Wang et al., 2019, Han et al., 2020, Wu et al., 2020, Chang et al., 2021).

The replication cycle of aliusvirids remains to be elucidated.

Figure 1.Aliusviridae. Genome length, organisation, and position of open reading frames (ORFs) of a representative virus in family Aliusviridae, Culverton virus (GenBank MN167499). ORFs are indicated as boxes, coloured according to the predicted protein function. GP, glycoprotein gene; NP, nucleoprotein gene; L, large protein gene.

Biology

Aliusvirids have been associated with insects.

Derivation of names

Aliusviridae: from Latin alius, meaning “other, another”

coleopteri: from Húběi coleoptera virus 3

culvertonense: from Culverton virus

hanchengense: from Hánchéng leafhopper mivirus

hymenopteri: from hymenopteran chu-related virus 123

insectii: from insect

nomadae: from Nomada lathburiana mononega-like virus

Obscuruvirus: from Latin obscurus, meaning “dark, dusky, shadowy”

Ollusvirus: from Estonian ollus, meaning “substance, matter, material

oropsyllae: from Oropsylla silantiewi mononega-like virus 2

rhagoveliae: from Rhagovelia obesa mononega-like virus

scaldisense: from Scaldis River bee virus

shayangense: from Shāyáng fly virus 1

taiyuanense: from Tàiyuán leafhopper virus

Genus demarcation criteria

Members of different aliusvirid genera have L protein sequences with <31% amino-acid identity (Di Paola et al., 2022).

Species demarcation criteria

Members of different aliusvirid species have L protein sequences with <90% amino-acid identity (Di Paola et al., 2022).

Relationships within the family

Phylogenetic relationships of members of the family Aliusviridae are shown in Figure 2.Aliusviridae.

Figure 2.Aliusviridae. Phylogenetic relationships of aliusvirids. Maximum-likelihood tree (midpoint-rooted) inferred by large protein gene (L) nucleotide sequences. Sequences were initially aligned by MAFFT version 7 (https://mafft.cbrc.jp/alignment/software/) in Geneious version R9 (http://www.geneious.com) and realigned using ClustalW (https://www.genome.jp/tools-bin/clustalw). Trees were inferred in FastTree version 2.1 (http://www.microbesonline.org/fasttree/) using a General Time Reversible (GTR) model with 20 Gamma-rate categories, 5,000 bootstrap replicates, and exhaustive search parameters (-slow) and pseudocounts (-pseudo). Numbers near nodes on the trees indicate bootstrap values as percentages. Tree branches are scaled to nucleotide substitutions per site (scale bar).

Relationships with other taxa

Aliusvirids are most closely related to jingchuviral chuvirids, crepuscuvirids, myriavirids, and natarevirids (Di Paola et al., 2022).