Shotgun Metagenomic Sequencing Reveals Virome Composition of Mosquitoes from a Transition Ecosystem of North-Northeast Brazil

Abstract

A wide diversity of pathogenic mosquito-borne viruses circulate in the Brazilian Amazon, and the intense deforestation can contribute to the spread of these viruses. In this context, this study aimed to investigate the viral diversity in mosquitoes of the genera Aedes, Culex, Haemagogus, and Sabethes from a transition area between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes in Brazil. Metagenomic high-throughput sequencing was used to characterize the virome of 20 mosquito pools. A total of 15 virus-like genomes were identified, comprising species genomically close to insect-specific viruses of the families Iflaviridae, Metaviridae, Lispiviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Xinmoviridae, and Parvoviridae and species of plant viruses of the families Solemoviridae, Virgaviridae, and Partitiviridae. However, sequences of viruses associated with human and animal diseases were not detected. Most of the recovered genomes were divergent from those previously described. These findings reveal that there are a large number of unknown viruses to be explored in the middle-north of Brazil.

Highly divergent and diverse viral community infecting sylvatic mosquitoes from Northeast Brazil

“…albopictus from China revealed a higher number of identified viral families, with at least 50 families specifically associated with vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, fungi, bacteria, and protozoa hosts (He et al, 2021). In Brazil, there have been few studies investigating the virome in Aedini , and the outcomes are similar with our findings, where the species exhibited a lower number of viral families or in certain cases did not showing viral sequences (Aragão et al, 2023; Duarte et al, 2022; Maia et al, 2019b; Pinto et al, 2017; Ribeiro et al, 2020). Each of these studies were conducted using distinct mosquito sampling, sequencing and bioinformatics approaches hindering direct comparison of the results.…”

“…In Brazil there have been few studies focusing on the virome of mosquitoes and the ones publishes covered a limited number of mosquito species from different biomes such as Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal, Amazon and Atlantic forest from Southeast and Northeast Brazil (Aragão et al, 2023; da Silva et al, 2021a; da Silva Ferreira et al, 2020b; da Silva Neves et al, 2021; Maia et al, 2019b; Pinto et al, 2017; Scarpassa et al, 2019b).…”

“…Regarding Sabethini viromes, few studies have been conducted only on species of the Sabethes and Wyeomyia genera (Aragão et al, 2023; Maia et al, 2019b; Pinto et al, 2017). Maia et al (2019) identified viruses from Flaviviridae, Chuviridae, Reoviridae, Phenuiviridae and Partitiviridae from Sabethes gymonothorax salivary glands sampled in at high Pantanal, Central-Western Brazil.…”

“…Maia et al (2019) identified viruses from Flaviviridae, Chuviridae, Reoviridae, Phenuiviridae and Partitiviridae from Sabethes gymonothorax salivary glands sampled in at high Pantanal, Central-Western Brazil. Another study conducted by Aragão et al (2023) identified viral sequences from Virgaviridae in Sa. chloropterus , Lispiviridae, Partitiviridae and Parvoviridae in Sa.…”

A tangled threesome: understanding arbovirus infection in Aedes spp. and the effect of the mosquito microbiota

“…A. aegypti and A. albopictus are commonly infected with ISVs ( Supplementary Figure 2 and Supplementary Table 1 ) (Hoshino et al, 2009 ; Rizzo et al, 2014 ; Vasilakis et al, 2014 ; Chandler et al, 2015 ; Fan et al, 2016 ; Fernandes et al, 2016 ; Sadeghi et al, 2017 ; Ajamma et al, 2018 ; Fang et al, 2018 , 2021a , b ; Iwashita et al, 2018 ; Parry et al, 2018 , 2021 ; Zakrzewski et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2018 ; Gravina et al, 2019 ; Martin et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Shi et al, 2019 ; Baidaliuk et al, 2020 ; da Silva Ferreira et al, 2020 ; Diagne et al, 2020 ; Jeffries et al, 2020 ; Kubacki et al, 2020 ; Ramos-Nino et al, 2020 ; Ribeiro et al, 2020 ; Supriyono et al, 2020 ; Thannesberger et al, 2020 ; Batson et al, 2021 ; Chiuya et al, 2021 ; Hameed et al, 2021 ; He et al, 2021 ; Munivenkatappa et al, 2021 ; Nebbak et al, 2021 ; Yezli et al, 2021 ; Calle-Tobón et al, 2022 ; Coatsworth et al, 2022 ; Duarte et al, 2022 ; Oguzie et al, 2022 ; Palatini et al, 2022 ; Aragão et al, 2023 ; Bennouna et al, 2023 ) that may alter their vectorial competence (Bolling et al, 2015 ; Öhlund et al, 2019 ). Phasi Charoen-like virus (PCLV) and Humaita Tubiacanga virus (HTV) are common ISVs found in A. aegypti , and A. albopictus ( Supplementary Figure 2 ).…”