ICTV Report

Subfamily: Actantavirinae

Genus: Percilovirus

 

Distinguishing features

Luposicya lupus actinovirus (LlAV) and and Wēnlǐng yellow goosefish virus (WEYGV) are the only classified perciloviruses. These viruses infect actinopterygian fish (Costa et al., 2023, Shi et al., 2018).

Virion

Virions are unknown.

Physicochemical and physical properties

Not reported.

Nucleic acid

Perciloviruses have tri-segmented negative-sense RNA genomes of about 10.6–12.3 kb (small [S] segment: 1.0–2.0 kb; medium [M] segment: 3.4–3.9 kb; large [L] segment: 6.2–6.4 kb) (Costa et al., 2023, Shi et al., 2018).

Proteins

Based on sequence data only, perciloviruses likely express three structural proteins: nucleoprotein (N), glycoprotein precursor (GPC), and large protein (L) (Costa et al., 2023, Shi et al., 2018).

Genome organization and replication

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

Percilovirus genome
Figure 1 Percilovirus. Schematic representation of percilovirus 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

Luposicya lupus actinovirus (LlAV) infect wolfsnout goby (gobiid Luposicya lupus J. L. B. Smith, 1959) in Australia (Costa et al., 2023) and Wēnlǐng yellow goosefish virus (WEYGV) infect yellow goosefish (lophiid Lophius litulon D. S. Jordan, 1902) in China (Shi et al., 2018). Replication-competent percilovirus isolates have not yet been obtained, and hence percilovirus biology remains to be elucidated.

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).