bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.23.449515; this version posted June 24, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Structural analysis of 3’UTRs in insect flaviviruses reveals novel determinant of sfRNA biogenesis and provides new insights into flavivirus evolution Andrii Slonchak1,#, Rhys Parry1, Brody Pullinger1, Julian D.J. Sng1, Xiaohui Wang1, Teresa F Buck1,2, Francisco J Torres1, Jessica J Harrison1, Agathe M G Colmant1, Jody Hobson- Peters1,3, Roy A Hall1,3, Andrew Tuplin4, Alexander A Khromykh1,3,# 1 School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia 2Current affiliation: Institute for Medical and Marine Biotechnology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany 3Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, Global Virus Network Centre of Excellence, Brisbane, QLD, Australia 4 School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K. # corresponding authors:
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[email protected] 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.23.449515; this version posted June 24, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Abstract Insect-specific flaviviruses (ISFs) circulate in nature due to vertical transmission in mosquitoes and do not infect vertebrates. ISFs include two distinct lineages – classical ISFs (cISFs) that evolved independently and dual host associated ISFs (dISFs) that are proposed to diverge from mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFs). Compared to pathogenic flaviviruses, ISFs are relatively poorly studied, and their molecular biology remains largely unexplored.