Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Pterovirus

Distinguishing features

Pteroviruses 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 Pterovirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Pteroviruses have bisegmented linear genomes of about 11.6 kb with three ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and a nucleoprotein (NP) (Käfer et al., 2019). The replication cycle of pteroviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The only classified pterovirus, hymenopteran chu-related virus OKIAV147 (HCrV147), has been associated with hymenopteran insects, i.e., wasps (aphelinid Aphelinus abdominalis (Dalman, 1820)) of unknown geographical origin (Käfer et al., 2019).

Species demarcation criteria

New pterovirus species should be established when the amino-acid identities of their complete L protein sequences are <90% compared to other viruses in the genus (Di Paola et al., 2022).