Isolation and characterization of the full coding sequence of a novel densovirus from the mosquito Culex pipiens pallens

1 State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 100 Ying Xin Street, Beijing 100052, PR China 2 Department of Arbovirus and Chlamydia, Yunnan Institute of Endemic Diseases Control and Prevention, 33 Wenhua Road, Dali City 67100, Yunnan Province, PR China 3 Xinjiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 Jianquan Street, Urumqi City 830000, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous, PR China 4 Department of Virology, Guizhou Province Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 73 BaGeYan Road, GuiYang City 550004, Guizhou Province, PR China 5 Department of Arbovirology, Institute for Animal Health, Pirbright, Woking, Surrey GU24 0NF, UK Correspondence Guo-dong Liang gdliang{at}hotmail.com During an investigation of arboviruses in China, a novel densovirus (DNV) was isolated from the adult female Culex pipiens pallens . The virus, designated Culex pipiens pallens densovirus (CppDNV), caused cytopathic effect in C6/36 cells. The virus particles were icosahedral, non-enveloped and had a mean diameter of 24 nm. The complete coding region of CppDNV was found to be 3335 nt and it contained three open reading frames (ORFs). CppDNV shares 82–93 % identical nucleotides with isolates of the Aedes albopictus densovirus [isolates AalDNV-1, AalDNV-2 (C6/36 DNV) and AalDNV-3], Aedes aegypti densovirus (AaeDNV) and Haemagogus equines densovirus (HeDNV). The nucleotide sequence identity among CppDNV isolates exceeds 98 %. Phylogenetic trees based on non-structural (NS1 and NS2) and capsid (VP) genes show that CppDNV clustered with the species AaeDNV and represents a novel variant of this species within the genus Brevidensovirus . The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the sequences reported in this paper are EF579756–EF579771. Supplementary tables are available with the online version of this paper.