Amalgaviridae


Amalgaviridae is a family of double-stranded RNA viruses that has two genera: Amalgavirus and Zybavirus. Members of both the family and of the genus Amalgavirus are referred to as amalgaviruses. There are currently ten recognized species of the family. The family is called amalga, from amalgam, due to the viruses possessing characteristics of both partitiviruses and totiviruses, indicating a likely genetic relation to those two families. Members of this family infect plants and are transmitted vertically via seeds. Their genomes are monopartite, about 3.5 kilobases in length, and contain two partially overlapping open reading frames, encoding the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and a putative capsid protein.

Taxonomy

Amalgaviridae

Evolution

It has been suggested that amalgaviruses have evolved via recombination between viruses with double-stranded and negative-strand RNA genomes. Specifically, phylogenetic analyses have shown that the amalgavirus RdRps form a sister clade to the corresponding proteins of partitiviruses which have segmented dsRNA genomes and infect plants, fungi and protists. By contrast, the putative capsid protein of amalgaviruses is homologous to the nucleocapsid proteins of negative-strand RNA viruses of the genera Phlebovirus and Tenuivirus.