Bioinformatic Characterization of Mosquito Viromes within the Eastern United States and Puerto Rico: Discovery of Novel Viruses

Mosquitoes are efficient, militarily relevant vectors of infectious disease pathogens, including many RNA viruses. The vast majority of all viruses are thought to be undiscovered. Accordingly, recent studies have shown that viruses discovered in insects are very divergent from known pathogens and that many of them lack appropriate reference sequences in the public databases. Given that the majority of viruses are likely still undiscovered, environ-mental sampling stands to provide much needed reference samples as well as genetic sequences for comparison. In this study, we sought to determine whether samples of mosquitoes collected from different sites (the Caribbean and locations on the US East Coast) could be differentiated using metagenomic analysis of the RNA viral fraction. We report here distinct virome profiles, even from samples collected short distances apart. In addition to profiling the previously known viruses from these samples, we detected a number of viruses that have been previously undiscovered.