Here, we describe a novel mycovirus, tentatively designated as "Rhizoctonia solani fusarivirus 6" (RsFV6), which was discovered in Rhizoctonia solani AG-3 PT strain 3P-2-2. The virus has a single-stranded positive-sense RNA (+ssRNA) genome of 6141 nucleotides containing two open reading frames (ORFs) and a poly(A) tail. ORF1 encodes a large polypeptide of 1,862 amino acids (aa) with conserved RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and helicase (Hel) domains. ORF2 encodes a putative 167-aa protein of unknown function. BLASTp searches revealed that the ORF1-encoded polypeptide showed the highest sequence similarity (70.67% identity) to that of Rhizoctonia solani fusarivirus 3 (RsFV3), which was isolated from Rhizoctonia solani AG-2-2LP. Multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic analysis based on RdRp and Hel sequences indicated that RsFV6 could be a novel member of the genus Alphafusarivirus family Fusariviridae.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.