Viruses 2015, 7(4), 1685-1699; doi:10.3390/v7041685
Deep Sequencing Reveals the Complete Genome and Evidence for Transcriptional Activity of the First Virus-Like Sequences Identified in Aristotelia chilensis (Maqui Berry)
1
Centro de Genómica y Bioinformática, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Mayor, Santiago 8580000, Chile
2
Centro Nacional de Secuenciación Genómica, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
3
Maqui New Life, Santiago, Chile
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Thomas Hohn
Received: 11 December 2014 / Revised: 12 March 2015 / Accepted: 25 March 2015 / Published: 3 April 2015
(This article belongs to the Section Viruses of Plants, Fungi and Protozoa)
Abstract
Here, we report the genome sequence and evidence for transcriptional activity of a virus-like element in the native Chilean berry tree Aristotelia chilensis. We propose to name the endogenous sequence as Aristotelia chilensis Virus 1 (AcV1). High-throughput sequencing of the genome of this tree uncovered an endogenous viral element, with a size of 7122 bp, corresponding to the complete genome of AcV1. Its sequence contains three open reading frames (ORFs): ORFs 1 and 2 shares 66%–73% amino acid similarity with members of the Caulimoviridae virus family, especially the Petunia vein clearing virus (PVCV), Petuvirus genus. ORF1 encodes a movement protein (MP); ORF2 a Reverse Transcriptase (RT) and a Ribonuclease H (RNase H) domain; and ORF3 showed no amino acid sequence similarity with any other known virus proteins. Analogous to other known endogenous pararetrovirus sequences (EPRVs), AcV1 is integrated in the genome of Maqui Berry and showed low viral transcriptional activity, which was detected by deep sequencing technology (DNA and RNA-seq). Phylogenetic analysis of AcV1 and other pararetroviruses revealed a closer resemblance with Petuvirus. Overall, our data suggests that AcV1 could be a new member of Caulimoviridae family, genus Petuvirus, and the first evidence of this kind of virus in a fruit plant. View Full-TextKeywords:
Aristotelia chilensis; Maqui berry; genome; transcriptome; comparative genomics; deep sequencing; RNA sequencing; Petuvirus; Caulimoviridae; plant virus
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Villacreses, J.; Rojas-Herrera, M.; Sánchez, C.; Hewstone, N.; Undurraga, S.F.; Alzate, J.F.; Manque, P.; Maracaja-Coutinho, V.; Polanco, V. Deep Sequencing Reveals the Complete Genome and Evidence for Transcriptional Activity of the First Virus-Like Sequences Identified in Aristotelia chilensis (Maqui Berry). Viruses 2015, 7, 1685-1699.