Arenavirus Coinfections Are Common in Snakes with Boid Inclusion Body Disease

Abstract

Recently, novel arenaviruses were found in snakes with boid inclusion body disease (BIBD); these form the new genus Reptarenavirus within the family Arenaviridae. We used next-generation sequencing and de novo sequence assembly to investigate reptarenavirus isolates from our previous study. Four of the six isolates and all of the samples from snakes with BIBD contained at least two reptarenavirus species. The viruses sequenced comprise four novel reptarenavirus species and a representative of a new arenavirus genus.

FIG 1

Phylogenetic relationships of the newly sequenced BIBDAVs. (A) Phylogenetic tree of aligned core polymerase domains of the RdRps of segmented negative-strand viruses. The tree was reconstructed by the maximum-likelihood method in MEGA 6.06 with 1,000 bootstrap replicates. The amino acid substitution model WAG was used as suggested by MEGA as the best-fitting model. Bootstrap support values of >70 are shown at the nodes. (B, C) Maximum-likelihood trees built on the basis of RdRp amino acid sequences (B) and nucleoprotein-encoding nucleotide sequences (C). The phylogeny was reconstructed with the MEGA 5.05 software with 1,000 bootstrap replicates. The sequence data set (including representatives of Old and New World arenaviruses (OWA and NWA, respectively) and the previously reported reptarenaviruses) was compiled from the Virus Pathogen Resource database. The nucleotide sequence alignment was guided by amino acid translations with Translator X (15) and the MAFFT algorithm. The viruses (abbreviations) are CAS virus (CASV), University of Helsinki viruses 1 to 4 (UHV-1 to -4), Boa Av NL B3, Aurora borealis viruses 1 to 3 (ABV-1 to -3), Golden Gate virus (GGV), Tavallinen suomalainen mies virus (TSMV), Hans Kompis virus (HKV), Suri Vanera virus (SVaV), University of Giessen viruses 1 to 4 (UGV-1 to -4), and Haartman Institute snake virus (HISV). The newly sequenced viruses are in bold.