Cameroonian fruit bats harbor divergent viruses, including rotavirus H, bastroviruses, and picobirnaviruses using an alternative genetic code

Yinda, Claude Kwe; Ghogomu, Stephen Mbigha; Conceição-Neto, Nádia; Beller, Leen; Deboutte, Ward; Vanhulle, Emiel; Maes, Piet; Van Ranst, Marc; Matthijnssens, Jelle

been described (Shi et al. 2016 ). Here, we identified five contigs with a PBV-like RdRp sequence. Surprisingly, these RdRP open reading frames (ORFs) could not be identified using the standard genetic translation code, and only when alternative genetic codes were used, a single large ORF could be identified. All these alternative genetic codes are those of invertebrate mitochondria and have in common a reassignment of the TGA stop to another amino acid (e.g. a tryptophan). An RdRp-based phylogenetic tree indicated that all PBV-like sequences in GenBank globally fall into two main clusters. One cluster mainly contains PBVs that use standard genetic code for protein translation, while the other clade contains PBV-like sequences that make exclusive use of the alternative genetic code for translation (Fig. 4A ).