Prospecting for viral natural enemies of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta in Argentina

PloS One
Steven M VallesLuis Calcaterra

Abstract

Metagenomics and next generation sequencing were employed to discover new virus natural enemies of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren in its native range (i.e., Formosa, Argentina) with the ultimate goal of testing and releasing new viral pathogens into U.S. S. invicta populations to provide natural, sustainable control of this ant. RNA was purified from worker ants from 182 S. invicta colonies, which was pooled into 4 groups according to location. A library was created from each group and sequenced using Illumina Miseq technology. After a series of winnowing methods to remove S. invicta genes, known S. invicta virus genes, and all other non-virus gene sequences, 61,944 unique singletons were identified with virus identity. These were assembled de novo yielding 171 contiguous sequences with significant identity to non-plant virus genes. Fifteen contiguous sequences exhibited very high expression rates and were detected in all four gene libraries. One contig (Contig_29) exhibited the highest expression level overall and across all four gene libraries. Random amplification of cDNA ends analyses expanded this contiguous sequence yielding a complete virus genome, which we have provisionally named Solenopsis invicta virus 5 (SIN...Continue Reading

References

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Jul 1, 1985·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Joseph Felsenstein

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Citations

Jun 26, 2018·The Journal of General Virology·Lumi ViljakainenJaana Jurvansuu
Nov 28, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Evan P StarrMary K Firestone
Apr 11, 2020·Microbiology Resource Announcements·Margaret L Allen
Jan 8, 2021·Virology Journal·César Augusto Diniz XavierAnna Elizabeth Whitfield

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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
SRP113235
PRJNA394996
GFUG00000000
MF593921
NC004807

Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR

Software Mentioned

BLASTX
GeneRacer
NextGENe
bwa
Vector NTI ContigExpress program

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