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. 2022 Dec 9;17(12):e0277276.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277276. eCollection 2022.

Abundance of Phasi-Charoen-like virus in Aedes aegypti mosquito populations in different states of India

Kavita Lole  1 , Ashwini Ramdasi  1 , Sucheta Patil  1 , Shivani Thakar  1 , Amol Nath  1 , Onkar Ghuge  1 , Abhranil Gangopadhayya  1 , Anakkathil B Sudeep  1 , Sarah Cherian  1
Affiliations

Abundance of Phasi-Charoen-like virus in Aedes aegypti mosquito populations in different states of India

Kavita Lole et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Mosquitoes are known to harbor a large number of insect specific viruses (ISV) in addition to viruses of public health importance. These ISVs are highly species specific and are non-pathogenic to humans or domestic animals. However, there is a potential threat of these ISVs evolving into human pathogens by genome alterations. Some ISVs are known to modulate replication of pathogenic viruses by altering the susceptibility of vector mosquitoes to pathogenic viruses, thereby either inhibiting or enhancing transmission of the latter. In the present study, we report predominance of Phasi Charoen-like virus (PCLV, Family: Phenuviridae) contributing to >60% of the total reads in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes collected from Pune district of Maharashtra state using next generation sequencing based metagenomic analysis of viromes. Similar results were also obtained with mosquitoes from Assam, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka states of India. Comparison of Pune mosquito sequences with PCLV Rio (Brazil) isolate showed 98.90%, 99.027% and 98.88% homologies in the S, M and L segments respectively indicating less genetic heterogeneity of PCLV. The study also demonstrated occurrence of transovarial transmission as seen by detection of PCLV in eggs, larvae, pupae and male mosquitoes. Ae. aegypti mosquitoes collected from Pune also showed a large number of reads for viruses belonging to Baculoviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Genomoviridae and Bunyaviridae families. The role of PCLV in the replication of dengue and chikungunya virus is yet not clear. It warrants further studies to know the significance of PCLV and other ISVs on the replication and transmission of Ae. aegypti borne pathogenic viruses, especially in the absence of prophylactics or therapeutics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interest exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Geo-reference map of locations from where the mosquitoes were collected.
1a) The enlarged map of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Pune City, prepared using software available at https://www.mapz.com (with due permission) shows two locations (Savitribai Phule Pune University area and Tadiwala road) while three locations on the outskirt of Pune city (Alandi, Chincholi and Dange chowk), 1b) Map of India prepared using software at https://www.gramener.com (free software) showing four locations from India, viz., Bengaluru, Dibrugarh, Madurai and Pune.
Fig 2
Fig 2
a: Detection of PCLV S, M and L segments from Pune adult female mosquito pools using RT-PCR. Products were analysed on 2% agarose gel, lanes- L1: Complete S segment, L2: Partial M segment, L3: Partial L segment, L4: 100 bp DNA ladder, L5: Negative control. b: Detection of PCLV S segment from mosquito samples from different locations from India using RT-PCR. Products were analyzed on 2% agarose gel, lanes- L1: 100 bp DNA ladder (Invitrogen), L2: Assam (AS) adult mosquito pool, L3: Pune, Maharashtra (MH) adult mosquito pool, L4: Karnataka (KA) adult mosquito pool, L5: Tamil Nadu (TN) mosquito eggs, L6: Tamil Nadu (TN) mosquito larvae, L7: Tamil Nadu (TN) mosquito pupae, L8: Tamil Nadu (TN) mosquito adults, L9: 100 bp DNA ladder.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Phylogenetic tree for PCLV S segment sequences.
Phylogenetic tree constructed via Maximum Likelihood (ML) method, using Tamura 3-Parameter and 1000 Bootstrap replicates for PCLV S segment sequences obtained from Aedes aegypti mosquitoes from different states of India, along with reference sequences from across the world.
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Grants and funding

Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, India funded the project as an extramural project granted to ABS, KSL and SC. Grant No. 6/9-7 (2019-ECD-II). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analyis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.