Occurrence and phylogenetic characterization of a baculovirus isolated from Culex quinquefasciatus in São Paulo State, Brazil.
The aim of this study was to assess the occurrence of baculovirus infections in mosquitoes and characterize them by using molecular tools. Fortnightly collections were made of mosquito larvae in the city of Caraguatatuba. Six larvae of Culex quinquefasciatus were isolated that had white cysts (nodules) in epithelia cells of the posterior midgut, indicative of infection by a baculovirus. These larvae were subjected to DNA extraction. DNA was amplified, producing a fragment of around 600 nt of the lef-8 gene and 400 nt of Pif-2 gene. The sequences were aligned, using ClustalX 2.0, with partial sequences of lef-8 genes of baculoviruses isolated from members of other insect orders taken from the GenBank database and edited, and phylogenetic analysis was performed. Phylogenetic analysis performed with the lef-8 and pif-2 genes demonstrated that the baculovirus identified in Culex quinquefasciatus in the Caraguatatuba region is most closely related to the deltabaculovirus Culex nigripalpus nucleopolyhedrovirus.
Instituto Butantan, Laboratório de Imunologia Viral, Av. Vital Brazil nº 1500, CEP 05503-900 São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Carlos José Pereira da Cunha
CJ
de Araujo Coutinho
Rafael
R
Alves
Neil D
ND
Sanscrainte
Andréa
A
de Barros Pinto Viviani
Paulo Frugoli
PF
Dos Santos
Polyana A Vasconcelos-Medeiros
PA
de Souza
Isabel Maria Vicente Guedes
IM
de Carvalho-Mello
James J
JJ
Becnel
D000818:Animals; D016367:Baculoviridae / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D001938:Brazil; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003465:Culex / Q000821:virology*; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
D004279:DNA, Viral