1887

Abstract

Mosquito-borne arboviruses, including a diverse array of alphaviruses and flaviviruses, lead to hundreds of millions of human infections each year. Current methods for species-level classification of arboviruses adhere to guidelines prescribed by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), and generally apply a polyphasic approach that might include information about viral vectors, hosts, geographical distribution, antigenicity, levels of DNA similarity, disease association and/or ecological characteristics. However, there is substantial variation in the criteria used to define viral species, which can lead to the establishment of artificial boundaries between species and inconsistencies when inferring their relatedness, variation and evolutionary history. In this study, we apply a single, uniform principle – that underlying the Biological Species Concept (BSC) – to define biological species of arboviruses based on recombination between genomes. Given that few recombination events have been documented in arboviruses, we investigate the incidence of recombination within and among major arboviral groups using an approach based on the ratio of homoplastic sites (recombinant alleles) to non-homoplastic sites (vertically transmitted alleles). This approach supports many ICTV-designations but also recognizes several cases in which a named species comprises multiple biological species. These findings demonstrate that this metric may be applied to all lifeforms, including viruses, and lead to more consistent and accurate delineation of viral species.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Directorate for Biological Sciences (Award DEB-1831730)
    • Principle Award Recipient: HowardOchman
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (Award R35GM118038)
    • Principle Award Recipient: HowardOchman
  • Directorate for Biological Sciences (Award DEB-1551092)
    • Principle Award Recipient: NotApplicable
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/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.001572
2021-04-08
2024-03-29
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