Identification of a novel member of the alphaendornavirus genus in Plantago ovata through transcriptome dataset mining

Plantago ovata is a medicinally important herb and belongs to the family Plantaginaceae. In the present study, we unveiled the viral spectrum of Plantago ovata, which was previously unexplored. Using the public domain RNA-seq dataset, a novel member of the Alphaendornavirus genus, provisionally named Plantgo ovata alphaendornavirus (PoEV) was discovered. The PoEV genome contains one open reading frame encoding a polyprotein with three conserved domains: helicase, glycosyltransferase and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). The pairwise sequence identity showed the highest nucleotide (nt) sequence identities (40.40%) with the corresponding nts of Helianthus annuus alphaendornavirus (HaEV). The predicted amino acid sequence of the PoEV was only 41.34% identical to the polyprotein of HaEV (MF362666), which was below the demarcation criteria for a new species in the family Endornaviridae. The PoEV isolate grouped phylogenetically with those of members of the Alphaendornavirus genus in the family Endornaviridae. The features of the encoded proteins, low nucleotide, and amino acid sequence identities of the replicase with the closest member, and the phylogenetic grouping suggested PoEV as a new member of the alphaendornavirus genus.