Diversity in a honey bee pathogen: first report of a third master variant of the Deformed Wing Virus quasispecies

Mordecai, Gideon J; Wilfert, Lena; Martin, Stephen J; Jones, Ian M; Schroeder, Declan C

The Type C genome codes for a full-length polyprotein and translation of the genome permitted the amino acid sequence to be compared with more distant members of the genus Iflavirus (Figure 2 ). The relationship of the DWV complex with Dark Green 498%, Light Green 90-98%, Yellow 85-90%, Orange 80-85%, Red o80%. Figure 1 Plot showing the percentage identity across the whole genome of (1) Devon DWV type A (ERS657948), (2) KV type A (NC0058762), (3) VDV-1 type B (AY251269) and (4) Devon Type C (ERS657949) compared with the DWV type A (NC004830) reference genome. Plot created by mVISTA (Frazer et al., 2004) . F. exsecta virus 2 and Sacbrood virus was analysed using a Bayesian inference of phylogeny of a conserved region of the RdRp amino acid sequence ( Figure 2 ). The DWV sequences were attributed to three main groups (type A, B and C). The nucleotide consensus sequences created by Vicuna for type A was found to be 98.2% identical to the type A reference DWV genome. The analysis suggested that the new Type C genome is clearly related to type A and B, and forms a distinct clade to other members of the family Iflaviridae (for example, Sacbrood virus) that are all only distantly related to a dicistrovirus outgroup, F. exsecta virus.