Insects are the most diversified and species-rich group of animals and harbor an immense diversity of viruses. Several taxa in the flavi-like superfamily, such as the genus Flavivirus, are associated with insects; however, systematic studies on insect virus genetic diversity are lacking, limiting our understanding of the evolution of the flavi-like superfamily. Here, we examined the diversity of flavi-like viruses within the most complete and up-to-date insect transcriptome collection comprising 1,243 insect species by employing a Flaviviridae RdRp profile hidden Markov model search. We identified seventy-six viral sequences in sixty-one species belonging to seventeen insect, one entognathan, and one arachnidan orders. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that twenty-seven sequences fell within the Flaviviridae phylogeny but did not group with established genera. Despite the large diversity of insect hosts studied, we only detected one virus in a blood-feeding insect, which branched within the genus Flavivirus, indicating that this genus likely diversified only in hematophagous arthropods. Nine new jingmenviruses with novel host associations were identified. One of the jingmenviruses established a deep rooting lineage additional to the insect- and tick-associated clades. Segment co-segregation phylogenies support the separation of tick- and insect-associated groups within jingmenviruses, with evidence for segment reassortment. In addition, fourteen viruses grouped with unclassified flaviviruses encompassing genome length of up to 20 kb. Species-specific clades for Hymenopteran- and Orthopteran-associated viruses were identified. Forty-nine viruses populated three highly diversified clades in distant relationship to Tombusviridae, a plant-infecting virus family, suggesting the detection of three previously unknown insect-associated families that contributed to tombusvirus evolution.

中文翻译：

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现存昆虫纲的病毒学揭示了类黄体超家族的进化

昆虫是最多样化和物种最丰富的动物群，并且拥有极其多样化的病毒。类黄病毒超科中的几个分类群，例如黄病毒属，与昆虫有关；然而，缺乏对昆虫病毒遗传多样性的系统研究，限制了我们对类黄病毒超家族进化的理解。在这里，我们通过使用 Flaviviridae RdRp 配置文件隐藏马尔可夫模型搜索，检查了包含 1,243 个昆虫物种的最完整和最新的昆虫转录组集合中类黄病毒的多样性。我们在属于 17 种昆虫、1 种昆虫和 1 种蛛形纲目的 61 个物种中鉴定了 76 个病毒序列。系统发育分析表明，有 27 个序列属于黄病毒科系统发育，但不属于已建立的属。尽管研究的昆虫宿主种类繁多，但我们仅在一种吸血昆虫中检测到一种病毒，该病毒在黄病毒属内分支，表明该属可能仅在食血节肢动物中多样化。鉴定出九种具有新宿主关联的新荆门病毒。其中一种荆门病毒建立了除昆虫和蜱相关进化枝之外的深根谱系。片段共分离系统发育支持荆门病毒内蜱和昆虫相关组的分离，有片段重组的证据。此外，14 种病毒与未分类的黄病毒分组，基因组长度可达 20 kb。鉴定了膜翅目和直翅目相关病毒的物种特异性进化枝。49 种病毒分布在三个高度多样化的进化枝中，它们与植物感染病毒家族 Tombusviridae 有远缘关系，这表明发现了三个以前未知的与昆虫相关的家族，它们有助于 tombusvirus 进化。