Fig. 4: Bracovirus genes and motifs architecture and evolution.

A C. congregata chromosome map with the location of all bracovirus loci: nudiviral gene loci are shown in red, nudiviral odv-e66 gene loci in hatched red and Proviral Loci (PL) in blue. The sizes of the circles correspond to the relative number of genes in each locus B Taxon-annotated GC content-coverage plot of the C. congregata genome associated with Braconidae (in black) and Polydnaviridae (in red). Each circle represents a scaffold in the assembly, scaled by length, and colored by taxonomy assigned by BlobTools. The x-axis corresponds to the average GC content of each scaffold and the y-axis corresponds to the average coverage based on alignment of the Illumina reads. C Measure of selection pressure on hymenopteran conserved genes, nudiviral genes and virulence genes. Pairwise evolutionary rates (dN/dS) of single-copy orthologous BUSCO genes, nudiviral genes, different copies from the expanded odv-e66 nudiviral gene family and virulence genes of C. congregata and C. sesamiae. Letters above boxes indicate significant differences determined by Kruskal–Wallis test (H = 296.8, 2 d.f., P < 0.001) followed by post hoc comparisons. D Schematic representation of the genomic amplification during the production of viral particles in the wasp ovaries. Replication Unit Motifs (RUM) are the motifs that constitute the extremities of the molecules amplified during particle production. Direct repeat junctions (DRJ), at the extremities of each segment are used during the excision/circularization process to produce packaged dsDNA circles from the amplified molecules. Host integration motifs (HIM) are motifs used during the integration of bracovirus circles in host genome. For each of these motifs an alignment of a representative set of sequence comprising five motifs from C. congregata and M. demolitor are represented (complete alignments are shown in Supplementary Fig. 4).