Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Demapteravirus

Distinguishing features

Demapteraviruses are primarily distinguished from viruses of other genera in the family based on nucleic acid sequence and organization differences (Di Paola et al., 2022). Members of the genus Demapteravirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Demapteraviruses have bisegmented linear genomes of about 10.6 kb (S1: about 8.5 kb; S2: about 2.2 kb) with four ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a nucleoprotein (NP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and a protein of unknown function (Käfer et al., 2019). The replication cycle of demapteraviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The only classified demapteravirus, dermapteran chu-related virus 142 (DCrV142), has been associated with dermapteran insects, i.e., earwigs (anisolabid Gonolabis marginalis (Dohrn, 1864)), in Japan (Käfer et al., 2019).

Species demarcation criteria

New demapteravirus species should be established when the amino-acid identities of their complete L protein sequence are <90% compared to other viruses in the genus (Di Paola et al., 2022).