The Nucleopolyhedrovirus (PastNPV), a Divergent Member of the Group I Clade, Encodes a Homolog of Ran GTPase.

We report the analysis of the genome of a novel , nucleopolyhedrovirus isolate 473 (PastNPV-473), from cadavers of the rice case bearer, Zeller (Lepidoptera: Crambidae), collected in rice fields in Kerala, India. High-throughput sequencing of DNA from PastNPV occlusion bodies and assembly of the data yielded a circular genome-length contig of 114,833 bp with 126 annotated opening reading frames (ORFs) and six homologous regions (s). Phylogenetic inference based on baculovirus core gene amino acid sequence alignments indicated that PastNPV is a member of the group I clade of viruses in genus , but different phylogenetic methods yielded different results with respect to the placement of PastNPV and four similarly divergent alphabaculoviruses in the group I clade. Branch lengths and Kimura-2-parameter pairwise nucleotide distances indicated that PastNPV-473 cannot be classified in any of the currently listed species in genus . A unique feature of the PastNPV genome was the presence of an ORF encoding a homolog of Ran GTPase, a regulator of nucleocytoplasmic trafficking. PastNPV appears to have acquired a homolog of Ran relatively recently from a lepidopteran host via horizontal gene transfer.