Eric Miska, Josephine Piffaretti, Guang Wu, David Wang, Alyson Ashe, Guoyan Zhao, Mabel Sanroman, Leonard Goldstein, Tony Belicard, Isabelle Nuez, Yanfang Jiang, Marie-Anne FELIX
[
Evolutionary Biology of Caenorhabditis and Other Nematodes,
2010]
We found natural viral infections in wild isolates of both C. elegans and C. briggsae. The infections visibly affect the intestinal cells. Infected worm lysates passed through 0.2 um filters could be used to infect uninfected worms, which could be further passaged for many generations. Two highly divergent but related RNA viruses in the family Nodaviridae, tentatively named Orsay nodavirus and Santeuil nodavirus, were detected and sequenced. The viruses were subject to processing by the RNAi machinery as evidenced by the detection of virally derived small RNAs that mapped to the entire viral genome. These data demonstrate that nodaviruses are natural parasites of nematodes in the wild. We detect intra-specific variation in sensitivity to the virus among different C. elegans or C. briggsae isolates. Further study of the interactions between these viruses and nematodes is likely to provide insight into the natural ecology of nematodes and may reveal novel innate immune mechanisms that respond to viral infection.