Co-Authors:
Levin, S., Department of Entomology, Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research Organization, Rishon LeZion, Israel, Institute of Agroecology and Plant Health, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel
Sela, N., Department of Plant Pathology and Weed Research, Institute of Plant Protection, Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion, Israel
Chejanovsky, N., Department of Entomology, Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research Organization, Rishon LeZion, Israel
Abstract:
Varroa destructor infestation of Apis mellifera colonies carries and/or promotes replication of honey bee viruses like the Deformed wing virus, the Varroa destructor virus-1, the Acute bee paralysis virus, the Israeli acute bee paralysis virus and the Kashmir bee virus that have been well described and characterized; but viruses exclusively associated with Varroa were not found. To look for viruses that may associate with-or infect V. destructor we performed deep sequencing (RNA-seq) of RNA extracted from honey bees and mites in Varroa-infested untreated colonies. Comparative bioinformatic analysis of the two separate contig-assemblies generated from the sequences' reads annotated using Blastx enabled identification of new viruses unique to Varroa and absent in A. mellifera: an Iflavirus and a virus with homology to Ixodes scapularis associated virus 2, that we named Varroa destructor virus 2 (VDV-2) and 3(VDV-3), respectively. We validated these findings sequencing the mite-and honey bee-viromes and in separate mites and honey bees randomly sampled. The complete genomes of VDV-2 and VDV-3 bear 9576 nucleotides and 4202 nucleotides, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of VDV-3 suggests that it belongs to a new group of viruses. Our results open venues for investigating the pathogenicity of these V. destructor viruses. © 2016 The Author(s).