Family: Hepadnaviridae

Genus: Parahepadnavirus

Distinguishing features

A novel hepatitis B like-virus, white sucker hepatitis B virus (WSHBV), was identified during transcriptome analysis of the liver of white sucker fish (Catostomus commersonii, Cypriniformes, Actinopterygii), a sentinel organism used to monitor the development of tumors as an indicator of exposure to environmental pollutants (Hahn et al., 2015). The WSHBV genome has the characteristic hepadnaviral ORFs, but lacks the X-gene of orthohepandaviruses and the pre-C region of avi- and orthohepadnaviruses. 

Virion

See discussion under family description. 

Genome organization and replication

See discussion under family description. 

Biology 

Viruses of fresh water teleosts

Member species

The Member Species table enumerating important virus exemplars classified under each species of the genus is provided at the bottom of the page.

Species demarcation criteria

There is only one species in the genus. 

Related, unclassified viruses

A virus, CSKV, infecting the Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) was identified by metagenomic sequencing of the complete genome of the Coho salmon (NC_034179). However this genome is incomplete, and the regions corresponding to the C-terminal part of the polymerase and the core region are missing. The genome was identified from kidney tissue (Lauber et al., 2017).