Cited by 326Mosquito-borne diseases and controlViral Infections and VectorsDiptera species taxonomy and behavior

Insect-specific flaviviruses: a systematic review of their discovery, host range, mode of transmission, superinfection exclusion potential and genomic organization

Open access
Blitvich, Bradley, Firth, Andrew·2015·Viruses

Abstract

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of insect-specific flaviviruses (ISFs) discovered in the last decade. Historically, these viruses have generated limited interest due to their inability to infect vertebrate cells. This viewpoint has changed in recent years because some ISFs have been shown to enhance or suppress the replication of medically important flaviviruses in co-infected mosquito cells. Additionally, comparative studies between ISFs and medically important flaviviruses can provide a unique perspective as to why some flaviviruses possess the ability to infect and cause devastating disease in humans while others do not. ISFs have been isolated exclusively from mosquitoes in nature but the detection of ISF-like sequences in sandflies and chironomids indicates that they may also infect other dipterans. ISFs can be divided into two distinct phylogenetic groups. The first group currently consists of approximately 12 viruses and includes cell fusing agent virus, Kamiti River virus and Culex flavivirus. These viruses are phylogenetically distinct from all other known flaviviruses. The second group, which is apparently not monophyletic, currently consists of nine viruses and includes Chaoyang virus, Nounané virus and Lammi virus. These viruses phylogenetically affiliate with mosquito/vertebrate flaviviruses despite their apparent insect-restricted phenotype. This article provides a review of the discovery, host range, mode of transmission, superinfection exclusion ability and genomic organization of ISFs. This article also attempts to clarify the ISF nomenclature because some of these viruses have been assigned more than one name due to their simultaneous discoveries by independent research groups.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3390/v7041927

Cites

115 of 115 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Insect-specific-like flaviviruses likely evolved from mosquito-borne viruses.

    “insect-specific-like flaviviruses, which likely evolved from mosquito-borne viruses (Blitvich and Firth, 2015;Moureau et al., 2015).”

    From Codon Pair Bias Is a Direct Consequence of Dinucleotide Bias (2016) · cites this paper as Blitvich and Firth, 2015

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 116 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [4]Gubler D.J. Kuno G. Markoff L. Flaviviruses Fields Virology 5th ed. Knipe D.M. Howley P.M. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins Philadelphia, PA, USA 2007 1153 1252

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Blitvich, B., & Firth, A.
Affiliations
  • Iowa State University (US)
  • University of Cambridge (GB)
Corresponding author
Blitvich, Bradley
Venue
Viruses
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2015-04-10
Volume
7
Issue
4
Pages
1927-1959
ISSN
1999-4915 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2028638155
Cited by
323
References
116
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 36 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 5
FWCI
5.12
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Viruses (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Wellcome Trust (088789)
  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R03AI167042)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Mosquito-borne diseases and control
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Viral Infections and Vectors
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Diptera species taxonomy and behavior
Keywords
insect-specific flaviviruses, flavivirus phylogeny, cell fusing agent virus, Culex flavivirus, superinfection exclusion, transmission mode, host range, sand flies, Chironomidae
MeSH terms
Animals, Flavivirus, Insecta, Terminology as Topic, Genetic Variation, Viral Interference, Genome, Viral, Gene Order, Host Specificity

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review