title: Two novel viruses associated with the Apis mellifera pathogenic mite Varroa destructor.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion, 7528809, Israel.|Institute of Agroecology and Plant Health, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Sofia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Levin
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Pathology and Weed Research, Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion, 7528809, Israel.
authors.forename: Noa
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sela
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, Institute of Plant Protection, Agricultural Research Organization, The Volcani Center, Rishon LeZion, 7528809, Israel.
authors.forename: Nor
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chejanovsky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000235:genetics / Q000469:parasitology*; D020451:Contig Mapping; D016679:Genome, Viral; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D056186:Metagenomics; D010802:Phylogeny; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057077:Varroidae / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology*; D014780:Viruses / Q000235:genetics*