Subfamily: Betarhabdovirinae

Genus: Betagymnorhavirus

Distinguishing features

The single virus classified in the genus Betagymnorhavirus has an unsegmented genomes and infects gymnosperms. It is positioned on a distinct branch in well-supported Maximum Likelihood or Maximum Clade Credibility trees using full-length L sequences and is most closely related to the alphagymnorhaviruses and the bisegmented varicosaviruses (Bejerman et al., 2022).

Virion

Morphology

Not known.

Nucleic acid

The negative-sense, single-stranded RNA genome is unsegmented.

Proteins

The N and L proteins are present in the betagymnorhavirus genome but the function of proteins encoded by other genes is unknown.

Lipids

Not known.

Genome organisation and replication

The betagymorhavirus genome (10.2 kb) has the gene order 3′-N-P2-P3-P4-L-5′- (Figure 1 Betagymnorhavirus).

Figure 1 Betagymnorhavirus. Schematic representation of the betagymorhavirus genome shown in reverse (positive-sense) polarity. N and L represent ORFs encoding the known structural proteins. Other ORFs (2, 3 and 4) encode proteins of unknown function (purple, green and light brown).

Biology

The betagymnorhavirus was identified from an in-silico analysis of plant gymnosperm transcriptome datasets.

Species demarcation criteria

There is only one species in the genus. For viruses to be assigned additional species in the genus, several of the following characteristics would have to be observed: A) nucleotide sequence identity lower than 75% in the L ORF; and B) occupy different ecological niches as evidenced by differences in hosts.