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. 2025 Jun 8;17(6):830.
doi: 10.3390/v17060830.

Discovery of a Rodent Hepacivirus in the Brazilian Amazon

Nelielma G Oliveira Prestes  1 , Leonardo H Almeida Hernández  1 , Fábio Silva da Silva  1   2 , Thito Y Bezerra da Paz  1   2 , Andressa O Aragão  3 , Bruno C Veloso de Barros  4 , Ricardo J P S Guimarães  5 , Rommel T J Ramos  3 , Lívia Medeiros Neves Casseb  1 , Sandro Patroca da Silva  1 , Pedro Fernando da Costa Vasconcelos  1   2 , Ana Cecília Ribeiro Cruz  1   2
Affiliations

Discovery of a Rodent Hepacivirus in the Brazilian Amazon

Nelielma G Oliveira Prestes et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

In the eastern Brazilian Amazon, the Viseu municipality has almost 70% of its territory deforested. Monitoring viruses from wildlife hosts enables the prevention and control of epizootic events and outbreaks. Seven samples from three marsupials and two rodents were screened by high-throughput sequencing for virome analysis. The three samples from the two Proechimys roberti rodents, one from the liver, one from the brain, and one from a pooled viscera sample, showed the highest results in terms of viral abundance and richness. From these we obtained two strains of a new rodent hepacivirus (RHV), which belongs to a new putative genotype of an unclassified RHV species previously described in Panama and Northeast Brazil. The findings expand the host range of the cited RHV species, imply virus circulation in the study area, and suggest a viral tropism in the liver and perhaps in the brain.

Keywords: deforestation; hepacivirus; marsupialia; rodentia; virome.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location of capture sites in the Centro Alegre community, Viseu.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Heatmap of viral reads on a normalized scale (log10) for the 49 viral families detected, distributed across the evaluated samples. The clusters indicate groupings based on abundance levels. The evaluated samples are displayed on the x-axis, and the potentially detected viral families are represented on the y-axis. (B) Alpha diversity graphs illustrate the observed metrics of abundance, richness, and Shannon as well as Simpson diversity indices.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Representation of the Hepacivirus polyprotein functional domains, comparing the identified contigs with close sequences. (B) Heatmap of the polyprotein’s nucleotide (lower triangle) and amino acid (upper triangle) identities of the three study sequences and close sequences.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Phylogenetic reconstruction based on the amino acid sequences of the Hepacivirus (A) polyprotein region, (B) NS3 region, and (C) NS5B region. The obtained sequences are highlighted in red.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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