Evidence for Novel Hepaciviruses in Rodents

Drexler, Jan Felix; Corman, Victor Max; Müller, Marcel Alexander; Lukashev, Alexander N.; Gmyl, Anatoly; Coutard, Bruno; Adam, Alexander; Ritz, Daniel; Leijten, Lonneke M.; van Riel, Debby; Kallies, Rene; Klose, Stefan M.; Gloza-Rausch, Florian; Binger, Tabea; Annan, Augustina; Adu-Sarkodie, Yaw; Oppong, Samuel; Bourgarel, Mathieu; Rupp, Daniel; Hoffmann, Bernd; Schlegel, Mathias; Kümmerer, Beate M.; Krüger, Detlev H.; Schmidt-Chanasit, Jonas; Setién, Alvaro Aguilar; Cottontail, Veronika M.; Hemachudha, Thiravat; Wacharapluesadee, Supaporn; Osterrieder, Klaus; Bartenschlager, Ralf; Matthee, Sonja; Beer, Martin; Kuiken, Thijs; Reusken, Chantal; Leroy, Eric M.; Ulrich, Rainer G.; Drosten, Christian

All discovered viruses originated from deep nodes close to the bifurcations separating genera within the flavivirus tree. In phylogenies on whole genome and individual gene alignments, the novel viruses clustered in a monophyletic clade with previously known hepaciviruses and GBV-B. The clade is highly diversified with NS5b amino acid sequence distances between taxa ranging up to 66.1%, exceeding that in the well-studied genus Flavivirus (55.8%). Maximal distances within the genera Pegivirus (52.9%) and Pestivirus (42.0%) are even lower, suggesting a particularly high diversity to exist in a tentative genus defined by the novel clade. Whereas this indicates that some or all of the novel rodent viruses together with GBV-B might alternatively form an independent genus, recent descriptions of novel pegi-and pestiviruses in bats and swine suggest the diversity also within these genera to be understudied [48, 57, 58] .