The Cristoli Virus: Discovery of a new virus of the family Bunyaviridae thanks to the NGS platform and several members of Jean-Michel Pawlotsky’s team

The family Bunyaviridae is a large but unfamiliar group of viruses with more than 300 members with a spherical and helical envelope. Viruses of this family can infect a wide range of hosts, from mosquitoes to marsupials and from thrips to tomatoes.

Several of the Bunyaviridae cause serious disease in humans; they represent a growing threat to human health and are good examples of so-called emerging infections.

Christophe Rodriguez, head of the NGS platform and several members of Jean-Michel Pawlotsky’s team, in collaboration with a team from the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, have just discovered a new member of this as yet unknown family, using the metagenomic technique that the platform has developed at the Henri Mondor hospital and which they have named “Cristoli Virus”. This virus has been identified in an immunocompromised patient with fatal encephalitis. Full genome sequencing revealed the high level expression of a virulence factor, which may explain the severity of the infection. The results of this discovery can be found in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol 26, n°6, June 2020 (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/19-1431_article).