Complete genome sequence of Lake Sinai virus 1 and Lake sinai virus 2 affected honey bees in southern Italy

The continuous losses of honey bee colonies have encouraged further investigation on honey bee infecting viruses. In 2017 and 2018, we investigated the presence of honey bee viruses in more than 35 apiaries located in Apulia region. RNA was extracted from a pool of 10 adult bees collected in each apiary then tested by RT-PCR. Results showed the presence of different viruses commonly infecting bees of which some were found for the first time in Italy including Lake sinai virus 1 and Lake sinai virus 2. Two hives were investigated by construction of total RNAseq libraries and subsequent high-throughput sequencing (HTS). Raw reads were quality-checked by FastQC. Paired reads of 101bp were assembled by metaSPAdes version 3.9.0 49 using "only-assembler" parameter and multiple kmers (-k 71, 81, 91). Obtained contigs were searched for similarity against “viruses” database by Blastn. Preliminary HTS and bioinformatic analysis retrieved the full length sequence of Lake sinai virus 1 and Lake sinai virus 2. Further investigations are in progress to understand the role of these viruses on honey bee health in Apulia.