Protoparvovirus is a genus of viruses in the Parvovirinae subfamily of the virus family Parvoviridae.[2][3] Vertebrates serve as natural hosts. There are 15 species in the genus[4] including Rodent protoparvovirus 1 for which the exemplar virus is minute virus of mice (MVM). This genus also includes canine parvovirus (CPV), which causes gastrointestinal tract damage in puppies that is about 80% fatal,[5] and porcine parvovirus (PPV), which is a major cause of fetal death and infertility in pigs.[6] The genus divides phylogenetically into two branches, one that contains many founder members of the family, such as MVM, CPV and PPV, which have been studied in considerable detail, and a second branch occupied exclusively by predicted viruses whose coding sequences were identified recently in the wild using virus discovery approaches, but whose biology remains minimally explored. This second branch currently contains two species whose members infect humans, called Primate protoparvovirus 1 and Primate protoparvovirus 3. Until 2014, the genus was called Parvovirus, but it was renamed to eliminate confusion between members of this genus and members of the entire family Parvoviridae.[7][8]
15 species are currently recognized, many containing several named viruses, virus strains, genotypes or serotypes. When applied to viruses, the definition of species is a little unusual.[9] It is simply an abstract taxonomic concept that clusters a selected range of genetic variants, helping to distinguish branches in a phylogenetic lineage, but it is not a physical entity like a virus that can infect an animal or be isolated.[10] If the diversity level used to define a species is set very low, many will effectively contain a single virus, and the virus and species may even be given the same name, resulting in confusion between the two concepts in the literature, and marginalizing the phylogenetic role of the species taxon. To counter this problem, the diversity level now recognized for species in the Parvoviridae is relatively broad: species are defined as a cluster of similar viruses that encode a particular replication protein, typically called NS1, that is at least 85% identical to the protein encoded by other members of the species.[7][8]
Protoparvoviruses that infect humans were first discovered in 2012 in the feces of children from Burkina Faso, and named using the siglum bufavirus.[11] Three genotypes of bufaviruses have so far been detected, circulating in Tunisia, Finland[12] and Bhutan[13]
A second virus in this genus that infects humans —cutavirus— was initially isolated from the feces of children with diarrhea.[14]
A third potential human protoparvovirus —tusavirus 1— has been reported in the feces of a single human, but whether or not it is able to infect humans or was simply ingested remains to be clarified.[15]
Viruses in genus Protoparvovirus have non-enveloped protein capsids around 18–26 nm in diameter, which show T=1 icosahedral symmetry. Genomes are single-stranded linear DNA between 4–6kb in length, with small (100–500b) imperfect palindromic sequences at each terminus that fold to form distinctive duplex hairpin telomeres.[5]