Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Chuvivirus

Distinguishing features

Chuviviruses are primarily distinguished from viruses of other genera in the family based on nucleic acid sequence and organization differences (Di Paola et al., 2022). Members of the genus Chuvirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Chuviviruses have bisegmented linear or bisegmented circular genomes of 11.3–11.7 kb (S1: 6.7–7.0 kb; S2: 4.6–4.7 kb) with three to four ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a nucleoprotein (NP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and/or proteins of unknown function (Li et al., 2015, Shi et al., 2016). The replication cycle of chuviviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The two classified chuviviruses, Wēnlǐng crustacean virus 14 (WlCV14) and Wēnzhōu crab virus 2 (WzCV2), have been associated with decapod crustaceans, i.e., with Asian paddle crabs (portunid Charybdis japonica (A. Milne-Edwards, 1861)) in China (Li et al., 2015, Shi et al., 2016). Unclassified chuviviruses have been associated with dipteran (lake fly), coleopteran (flea beetle), hemipteran (brown planthopper, stinkbug), odonatan (common bluetail), and orthopteran (short-horned grasshopper) insects in China and rhynchocephalian (tuatara) reptiles in New Zealand.

Species demarcation criteria

Members of different species have amino-acid identities of complete L sequences of <90% (Di Paola et al., 2022).

Related, unclassified viruses

Virus names and virus abbreviations are not official ICTV designations.

* Incomplete genome