Endangered wild salmon infected by newly discovered viruses

Mordecai, Gideon J; Miller, Kristina M; Di Cicco, Emiliano; Schulze, Angela D; Kaukinen, Karia H; Ming, Tobi J; Li, Shaorong; Tabata, Amy; Teffer, Amy; Patterson, David A; Ferguson, Hugh W; Suttle, Curtis A

The distribution and abundance of the different viruses varied markedly. Arenaviruses were relatively common ( With the exception of their relatively recent discovery in snakes (Stenglein et al., 2012) and frogfish , arenaviruses were thought to solely infect mammals. The arenaviruses reported here share less than 15% amino-acid sequence similarity (in the RdRp) to those from mammals and snakes, and define a new monophyletic evolutionary group, the pescarenaviruses ( Figure 1A ). The absence of clear sequence homology in the glycoprotein, the difference in genome segmentation , as well as phylogenetic analysis of the replicase demonstrate that pescarenaviruses share a common but ancient ancestor with arenaviruses infecting snakes and mammals. We recommend these fish-infecting arenaviruses are assigned to the new genus Pescarenavirus, with those infecting Chinook and sockeye salmon being assigned to the species Salmon pescarenavirus (SPAV), strains 1 and 2, respectively.