Family: Chuviridae

Genus: Taceavirus

Distinguishing features

Taceaviruses 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 Taceavirus have L protein sequences that are >31% identical to each other.

Genome organization and replication

Taceaviruses have nonsegmented linear genomes of about 11.1 kb with three ORFs encoding a glycoprotein (GP), a large (L) protein with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase (RdRP) domain, and a protein of unknown function (Shi et al., 2016). The replication cycle of taceaviruses remains to be elucidated.

Biology

The only classified taceavirus, Wēnlǐng crustacean virus 15 (WlCV15), has been associated with unspecified crustaceans in China (Shi et al., 2016).

Species demarcation criteria

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