Enormous biodiversity of Viruses in insects

Cela fait froid dans le dos cet article , voir PJ ...............c'est en langue  anglo-saxonne , mais c'est facile à comprendre.
Il y a l'adresse du site où on peut voir le graphique.


Enormous biodiversity of viruses in insects
Figure: Negative strand RNA viruses in insects (red), other arthropods (orange), vertebrates (black) and plants (green). Viruses discovered in the present study are identified by an asterisk. Figure: Negative strand RNA viruses in insects (red), other arthropods (orange), vertebrates (black) and plants (green). Viruses discovered in the present study are identified by an asterisk.

A major transcriptome study of insects has revealed a unique glimpse into the biodiversity of viruses.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1008224

Researchers from Charité´s institute of virology, in collaboration with colleagues from the Research Museum Alexander König in Bonn, have scanned the most comprehensive collection of insect transcriptomes for viral genomes. The present publication focuses on only a part of the overall findings and describes novel insect-associated RNA viruses with a negative strand genome. The detected viruses will require the definition of at least 20 novel genera and one novel family of viruses.

Based on the knowledge of these novel viruses, researchers hope to discover new agents of disease in animals including humans. Because virus discovery is based on sequence comparison, computer algorithms used in virus discovery pipelines can only recognize new viruses if these are not too different from known viruses. Discoveries of fundamentally new viruses, such as in the present study, may therefore extend our general capabilities to discover new causes and etiologies of diseases previously unexplained. Also, emerging viruses from insects may be recognized early on.

In addition, the study enables important conclusions regarding the evolution of viruses. For the first time, it becomes obvious that major lineages of viruses were shaped by coevolution with their insect hosts. These data enable a better understanding of sources of infection for humans and animals. Knowledge of insect-associated viruses is also relevant for a major upcoming challenge in human nutrition: the utility of insects as a protein source for a growing human population.