Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Rochuvirus

Distinguishing features

Rochuviruses 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 Rochuvirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Rochuviruses have nonsegmented linear genomes of 11.3 kb with three ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and a protein of unknown function (Wu et al., 2020). The replication cycle of rochuviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The only classified rochuvirus, Chalcocoris rutilans mononega-like virus 2 (CRmlV2), has been associated with hemipteran insects, i.e., stink bugs (pentatomid Chalcocoris rutilans (Fabricius, 1781)) in Cameroon (Wu et al., 2020).

Species demarcation criteria

New rochuvirus 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).