Fitness costs of naturally occurring viruses of Drosophila

Drosophila remains a pre-eminent insect model system for host-virus interaction, but the host range and fitness consequences of the drosophilid virome are poorly understood. Metagenomic studies have reported over 160 viruses associated with Drosophilidae, but few isolates are available to characterise the Drosophila immune response, and most characterisation has relied on injection and systemic infection. This project attempts to characterise the fitness costs of both unisolated and isolated native viruses of Drosophila. The sequenced samples were taken from the experiment to examine whether unexpectedly horizontally transmitted viruses were replicating in Drosophila melanogaster.