Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Vapochuvirus

Distinguishing features

Vapochuviruses 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 Vapochuvirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Vapochuviruses have nonsegmented linear genomes of about 11.2 kb with three ORFs encoding a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, a nucleoprotein (NP), and a protein of unknown function (Wu et al., 2020). The replication cycle of vapochuviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The only classified vapochuvirus, Trialeurodes vaporariorum mononega-like virus 2 (TVmlV2), has been associated with hemipteran insects, i.e., greenhouse whiteflies (aleyrodid Trialeurodes vaporariorum Westwood, 1856) in China (Wu et al., 2020).

Species demarcation criteria

New vapochuvirus 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).