Phasmaviridae is a family of
virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...
es with
negative stranded RNA genomes associated with insect hosts. They are a member of the order ''
Bunyavirales
''Bunyavirales'' is an order of segmented negative-strand RNA viruses with mainly tripartite genomes. Member viruses infect arthropods, plants, protozoans, and vertebrates. It is the only order in the class ''Ellioviricetes''. The name ''Bunyavi ...
''.
Phasmaviruses were first discovered in phantom midges of the genus ''
Chaoborus'' in 2014.
Taxonomy
The family contains the following six genera:
* ''
Feravirus''
* ''
Hymovirus''
* ''
Jonvirus''
* ''
Orthophasmavirus''
* ''
Sawastrivirus''
* ''
Wuhivirus''
''Ferak feravirus''
''Ferak feravirus'', a member of the genus ''
Feravirus'', has been isolated in
cell culture. The virion is enveloped and spherical with a diameter of 80–120
nanometers. The
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding g ...
has three segments L (6.8 kilobases), M (4.2 kilobases) and S (1.5 kilobases). It encodes five
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...
s—the
polymerase on the L segment, the p12G and the Gc-Gn protein on the M segment and the N and p12 proteins in the S segment.
[Marklewitz M, Zirkel F, Kurth A, Drosten C, Junglen S (2015) Evolutionary and phenotypic analysis of live virus isolates suggests arthropod origin of a pathogenic RNA virus family. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(24):7536–7541. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1502036112]
A Gn–Gc
glycoprotein dimer binds to the
cell receptor
In biochemistry and pharmacology, receptors are chemical structures, composed of protein, that receive and transduce signals that may be integrated into biological systems. These signals are typically chemical messengers which bind to a recept ...
. The virus is
endocytosed and escapes into the
cytoplasm
In cell biology, the cytoplasm is all of the material within a eukaryotic cell, enclosed by the cell membrane, except for the cell nucleus. The material inside the nucleus and contained within the nuclear membrane is termed the nucleoplasm. ...
where it
replicates. It is released from the cell by
budding
Budding or blastogenesis is a type of asexual reproduction in which a new organism develops from an outgrowth or bud due to cell division at one particular site. For example, the small bulb-like projection coming out from the yeast cell is kno ...
.
[
]
References
External links
* Viral zon
Virus Pathogen Database and Analysis Resource (ViPR): Bunyavirales
Bunyavirales
Virus families
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