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

replicate in honey bees. The capacity of DWV to exist as a swarm of recombining variants and occupy large amounts of sequence space may be one of the factors contributing to its capability to maintain a persistent infection. Defining DWV as a quasispecies with discrete master variants is comparable with the current categorisation of several other RNA viruses. The genetic variability within Hepatitis C virus has been classified into four hierarchical strata: genotypes, sub-genotypes, isolates and finally background variation of the quasispecies (Farci and Purcell, 2000) . A total of seven Hepatitis C virus genotypes exist to date, differing from each other by 415% over their complete coding region (Smith et al., 2014) . Similarly, Japanese encephalitis virus is currently classified into five genotypes based on sequence identity that differ in replication efficiency in a range of hosts (Han et al., 2014) . In order to further our understanding of DWV and the impact of the virus on honey bees as well as other hosts, a more progressive classification of the DWV quasispecies would be prudent, that is, the new classification of DWV as a quasispecies with at least three master variants that can recombine with each other.