Subfamily: Mammantavirinae

Genus: Mobatvirus

Distinguishing features

Láibīn virus (LAIV), Lena virus (LENV), Lóngquán virus (LQUV), Nova virus (NVAV), Quezon virus (QZNV), and Xuân Sơn virus (XSV) are the only classified mobatviruses. Mobatviruses infect bats and eulipotyphla (Kang et al., 2009, Arai et al., 2013, Xu et al., 2015, Arai et al., 2016b, Yashina et al., 2019).

Virion

Virions are unknown.

Nucleic acid

Mobatviruses have tri-segmented negative-sense RNA genomes of 11.1–12.4 kb (small [S] segment: 1.3–2.0 kb; medium [M] segment: 3.4–3.9 kb; large [L] segment: 6.4–6.6 kb) (Kang et al., 2009, Arai et al., 2013, Xu et al., 2015, Arai et al., 2016b, Witkowski et al., 2016, Arai et al., 2019a, Kang et al., 2019, Yashina et al., 2019, Zana et al., 2019, Weiss et al., 2022).

Proteins

Based on sequence data only, mobatviruses likely express three structural proteins: nucleoprotein (N), glycoprotein precursor (GPC), and large protein (L) (Kang et al., 2009, Arai et al., 2013, Xu et al., 2015, Arai et al., 2016b, Yashina et al., 2019).

Genome organization and replication

The S segment encodes N, the M segment encodes GPC, and the L segment encodes L (Figure 1 Mobatvirus). Mobatvirus genomic segments are expected to assume circular forms via non-covalent binding of complementary and conserved 3′- and 5′-terminal sequences.

Figure 1 Mobatvirus. Schematic representation of mobatvirus genome organization. The 5′- and 3′-ends of each segment (S, M and L) are, by analogy to other hantavirids, predicted to be complementary at their termini, likely promoting the formation of circular ribonucleoprotein complexes within the virion.

Biology

Láibīn virus infects black-bearded tomb bats (emballonurid Taphozous melanopogon Temminck, 1841) in China and Myanmar (Xu et al., 2015, Arai et al., 2019b). Lena virus infects Laxmann`s shrews (soricid Sorex caecutiens Laxmann, 1788) in Russia (Yashina et al., 2019). Nova virus infects European moles (talpid Talpa europaea Linnaeus, 1758) in Belgium, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, and Ukraine (Kang et al., 2009, Gu et al., 2014a, Gu et al., 2014b, Laenen et al., 2015, Gu et al., 2016, Cuperus et al., 2022, Kikuchi et al., 2023) and Spanish moles (Talpa occidentalis Cabrera, 1907) in Spain (Gu et al., 2023). Quezon virus infects Geoffroy’s rousettes (pteropodid Rousettus amplexicaudatus É. Geoffroy, 1810) in the Philippines (Arai et al., 2016b). Xuân Sơn virus is associated with Pomona leaf-nosed bats (hipposiderid Hipposideros Pomona Andersen, 1918) and ashy leaf-nosed bats (Hipposideros cineraceus Blyth, 1853) in China and Vietnam (Arai et al., 2013, Xu et al., 2019). Unclassified, potential mobatviruses infect hipposiderid, molossid, and vespertillionid bats and soricid eulipotypha (Witkowski et al., 2016, Arai et al., 2019a, Kang et al., 2019, Zana et al., 2019, Weiss et al., 2022).

Species demarcation criteria

Demarcation of species is based upon DivErsity pArtitioning by hieRarchical Clustering (DEmARC) analysis) using concatenated deduced S, M, and L segment expression product sequences (Laenen et al., 2019).

Related, unclassified viruses

Virus names and virus abbreviations are not official ICTV designations.

*Coding region sequence incomplete.