Mosquito excreta expands the known RNA virome of North America
Updated: Aug 30
Review written by: Megan Mauriello
Culex mosquitoes were collected from sites in New Brunswick, NJ. They were fed sucrose, and a superhydrophobic funnel (Figure) was used to collect their excrement. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing was performed on samples, and bioinformatic analyses were used to identify reads corresponding to RNA viruses, trypanosomatid (protist) parasites, and the host mosquitoes themselves.
RNA viruses detected included ones not previously reported in the Americas, ones not previously associated with Culex mosquitoes, and even some putatively novel viruses. Viruses highlighted in the paper had high genome coverage, suggesting they are true positives for those viruses. Viruses detected were phylogenetically diverse, including members of the families: Flaviviridae (West Nile virus), Peribunyaviridae, Nodaviridae, Orthototiviridae, Tombusviridae, Mesoniviridae, Iflaviridae, Orthomyxoviridae, Rhaboviridae, Phasmaviridae, and Leishbuviridae. Two potentially novel viruses were detected: one from the family Partitiviridae, and one from the order Picornavirales.
Almost 30% of emerging infectious disease events are transmitted via arthropod vectors, and mosquitoes are particularly important vectors for arboviruses such as Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika, as well as other diseases including malaria. This paper describes the development of a novel approach for monitoring mosquito-carried viruses, and could potentially be used to detect other mosquito-carried infectious agents (e.g. Plasmodium spp., responsible for malaria). Unlike the most common surveillance approaches, this one does not require a large quantity of mosquitoes and is also less labor intensive. The team is also working on developing a field-deployable version of their excrement-collection apparatus. Their approach does not require selection of specific viruses to search for, unlike methods utilizing qPCR. Similar methods could be used to study “prototype pathogens”, which are viruses from families which are more likely to be future epidemic or pandemic agents.
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READ MORE:
Price DC, Bezhani FL, Meng Z, Porfirio-LaStrapes M, Wagner NE, Javanmard M, Han T, Barnes MM.0.Metaviromic profiling of mosquito excreta using superhydrophobic collection devices expands the known RNA virome of North America. Microbiol Spectr0:e00938-26.
