Discovery of putative novel viruses in the transcriptomes of endangered plant species native to India and China

• Published in: Gene 2021-06, Vol.786, p.145626-145626, Article 145626
• Main Authors: Sidharthan, V. Kavi, Kalaivanan, N.S., Baranwal, V.K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: China; Computational Biology; Endangered; Endangered Species; Gene Expression Profiling - methods; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; India; Phylogeny; Plant; Plant Viruses - classification; Plant Viruses - genetics; Plant Viruses - isolation & purification; Plants - genetics; Plants - virology; Public domain; Sequence Analysis, RNA; Transcriptome; Virome; Virus
• ISSN: 0378-1119; 1879-0038
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gene.2021.145626

•Nine putative novel viruses were discovered from public domain transcriptome datasets of five endangered plant species native to India and China.•Of the fifteen recovered viral genomic segments, ten were coding-complete and five were partial.•The viral genomic sequences recovered in the current study will serve as a resource for further characterization of the identified viruses. Viruses are abundant entities that infect almost every living organism. In recent years, Next Generation Sequencing coupled with bioinformatic analyses is widely adopted for identification of known and unknown viruses in a plant sample. In the present study, nine putative novel viruses were discovered from public domain transcriptome datasets of five endangered plant species by de novo assembly of reads using CLC and SPAdes followed by BLAST analysis. Of the identified viruses, ten coding-complete and five partial genomic segments were recovered. Based on phylogeny and BLAST analysis, the identified viruses were putatively assigned to various plant viral genera except dactylorhiza hatagirea benylike virus that probably represents a new group of plant virus. The methodology followed can be adopted for the discovery of novel viruses in plant species with little genomic information. Viral genome sequences recovered in the study will serve as a valuable resource for further characterization of identified viruses.