Global shrimp farming is increasingly threatened by various emerging viruses. In the present study, a novel picornavirus,
Penaeus vannamei picornavirus (
PvPV), was discovered in moribund White leg shrimp (
Penaeus vannamei) collected from farm ponds in China in 2015. Similar
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Global shrimp farming is increasingly threatened by various emerging viruses. In the present study, a novel picornavirus,
Penaeus vannamei picornavirus (
PvPV), was discovered in moribund White leg shrimp (
Penaeus vannamei) collected from farm ponds in China in 2015. Similar to most picornaviruses,
PvPV is non-enveloped RNA virus, with a particle diameter of approximately 30 nm. The sequence of the positive single-stranded RNA genome with a length of 10,550 nts was characterized by using genome sequencing and reverse transcription PCR. The existence of
PvPV related proteins was further proved by confirmation of viral amino acid sequences, using mass spectrometry analysis. Phylogenetic analysis based on the full-length genomic sequence revealed that
PvPV was more closely related to the Wenzhou shrimp virus 8 than to any other dicistroviruses in the order
Picornavirales. Genomic sequence conservative domain prediction analysis showed that the
PvPV genome encoded a large tegument protein UL36, which was unique among the known dicistroviruses and different from other dicistroviruses. According to these molecular features, we proposed that
PvPV is a new species in the family
Dicistroviridae. This study reported the first whole-genome sequence of a novel and distinct picornavirus in crustaceans,
PvPV, and suggests that further studies of
PvPV would be helpful in understanding its evolution and potential pathogenicity, as well as in developing diagnostic techniques.
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