Project description:Members of the family Marseilleviridae are giant viruses that have the ability to infect amoebas. Such viruses were initially described in 2009. Since then, this family has grown, and diverse members have been found in different environments and geographic locations. Previous phylogenetic analyses suggested the existence of four marseillevirus lineages. A fourth lineage was described with the discovery of the Brazilian marseillevirus (BrMr), isolated from Pampulha Lake, Brazil. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of the Golden marseillevirus (GMar), a new marseillevirus isolated from golden mussels (Limnoperna fortunei) in South of Brazil. This new representative of Marseilleviridae has circular, double-stranded (dsDNA) that contains 360, 610 base pairs and encodes 483 open read frames (ORFs). The complete virus genome was sequenced and phylogenic analyses indicated clear differences between this virus and other marseilleviruses. In addition, this is the only marseillevirus so far that has been isolated from mussels, and this report expands the diversity of environments from which giant viruses could be recovered.

| S-EPMC5064363 | biostudies-literature

Gene discovery through transcriptome sequencing for the invasive mussel Limnoperna fortunei.

Project description:The success of the Asian bivalve Limnoperna fortunei as an invader in South America is related to its high acclimation capability. It can inhabit waters with a wide range of temperatures and salinity and handle long-term periods of air exposure. We describe the transcriptome of L. fortunei aiming to give a first insight into the phenotypic plasticity that allows non-native taxa to become established and widespread. We sequenced 95,219 reads from five main tissues of the mussel L. fortunei using Roche's 454 and assembled them to form a set of 84,063 unigenes (contigs and singletons) representing partial or complete gene sequences. We annotated 24,816 unigenes using a BLAST sequence similarity search against a NCBI nr database. Unigenes were divided into 20 eggNOG functional categories and 292 KEGG metabolic pathways. From the total unigenes, 1,351 represented putative full-length genes of which 73.2% were functionally annotated. We described the first partial and complete gene sequences in order to start understanding bivalve invasiveness. An expansion of the hsp70 gene family, seen also in other bivalves, is present in L. fortunei and could be involved in its adaptation to extreme environments, e.g. during intertidal periods. The presence of toll-like receptors gives a first insight into an immune system that could be more complex than previously assumed and may be involved in the prevention of disease and extinction when population densities are high. Finally, the apparent lack of special adaptations to extremely low O2 levels is a target worth pursuing for the development of a molecular control approach.

| S-EPMC4105566 | biostudies-literature

xbLimFort

Project description:Limnoperna fortunei (golden mussel)

| PRJEB52051 | ENA