title: A potentially novel overlapping gene in the genomes of Israeli acute paralysis virus and its relatives.
abstract: The Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) is a honeybee-infecting virus that was found to be associated with colony collapse disorder. The IAPV genome contains two genes encoding a structural and a nonstructural polyprotein. We applied a recently developed method for the estimation of selection in overlapping genes to detect purifying selection and, hence, functionality. We provide evolutionary evidence for the existence of a functional overlapping gene, which is translated in the +1 reading frame of the structural polyprotein gene. Conserved orthologs of this putative gene, which we provisionally call pog (predicted overlapping gene), were also found in the genomes of a monophyletic clade of dicistroviruses that includes IAPV, acute bee paralysis virus, Kashmir bee virus, and Solenopsis invicta (red imported fire ant) virus 1.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. nsabath@uh.edu
authors.forename: Niv
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sabath
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Price
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Graur
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D005807:Genes, Overlapping; D016679:Genome, Viral; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012328:RNA Viruses / Q000737:chemistry / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment