Ball Python Nidovirus: a Candidate Etiologic Agent for Severe Respiratory Disease in Python regius

Stenglein, Mark D.; Jacobson, Elliott R.; Wozniak, Edward J.; Wellehan, James F. X.; Kincaid, Anne; Gordon, Marcus; Porter, Brian F.; Baumgartner, Wes; Stahl, Scott; Kelley, Karen; Towner, Jonathan S.; DeRisi, Joseph L.

The evolutionary relationship between ball python nidovirus and other nidoviruses is partially clear. In analyses based on the highly conserved replicase subunits, this virus clearly clusters with viruses in the subfamily Torovirinae, the toroviruses found in mammals and the bafiniviruses found in ray-finned fish, with 100% Bayesian posterior probability and ML bootstrap support ( Fig. 7 ; see also Fig. S6 in the supplemental material) . This suggests that at least for the core replicase gene, the snake virus shares a common evolutionary origin with these mammal and fish viruses. Although it has not been proven that the virus sequence corresponds to the particles observed in electron micrographs, the ultrastructural appearance and size of the observed virus are notably similar to those of virions of white bream virus in the genus Bafinivirus (61, 62) . We propose that ball python nidovirus establish a new genus in the Torovirinae named Barnivirus, for bacilliform reptile nidovirus, a naming convention borrowed from the genus Bafinivirus.