Wild birds harbour a large number of adenoviruses that remain uncharacterised with respect to their genomic organisation, diversity, and evolution within complex ecosystems. Here, we present the first complete genome sequence of an atadenovirus from a passerine bird that is tentatively named Passerine adenovirus 1 (PaAdV-1). The PaAdV-1 genome is 39,664 bp in length, which was the longest atadenovirus to be sequenced, to the best of our knowledge, and contained 42 putative genes. Its genome organisation was characteristic of the members of genus Atadenovirus; however, the novel PaAdV-1 genome was highly divergent and showed the highest sequence similarity with psittacine adenovirus-3 (55.58%). Importantly, PaAdV-1 complete genome was deemed to contain 17 predicted novel genes that were not present in any other adenoviruses sequenced to date, with several of these predicted novel genes encoding proteins that harbour transmembrane helices. Subsequent analysis of the novel PaAdV-1 genome positioned phylogenetically to a distinct sub-clade with all others sequenced atadenoviruses and did not show any obvious close evolutionary relationship. This study concluded that the PaAdV-1 complete genome described here is not closely related to any other adenovirus isolated from avian or other natural host species and that it should be considered a separate species.

中文翻译：

---

新型高度分化的雀形腺病毒的分子特征1。

野生鸟类带有大量腺病毒，就其基因组组织，多样性和在复杂生态系统中的进化而言，其特征仍然未知。在这里，我们介绍了来自雀形目鸟的腺病毒的第一个完整基因组序列，暂定名为雀形腺病毒1（PaAdV-1）。据我们所知，PaAdV-1基因组的长度为39,664 bp，是被测序的最长的腺病毒，它包含42个推定的基因。它的基因组组织是腺病毒属成员的特征; 但是，新的PaAdV-1基因组差异很大，与psittacine腺病毒3的序列相似性最高（55.58％）。重要的是，PaAdV-1完整基因组被认为包含迄今已测序的任何其他腺病毒中均不存在的17个预测的新基因，其中一些预测的新基因编码具有跨膜螺旋蛋白。随后对新的PaAdV-1基因组的分析与所有其他测序的腺病毒在系统发育上位于不同的亚进化枝，并且未显示任何明显的紧密进化关系。这项研究得出的结论是，此处描述的PaAdV-1完整基因组与从禽类或其他自然宿主物种中分离出的任何其他腺病毒都没有密切关系，因此应将其视为一个单独的物种。