Detection and Genetic Analysis of Jingmen Tick Virus in Greece

Jingmen tick virus (JMTV) is an emerging, segmented RNA virus in the Flaviviridae family. Since its first identification in 2010 in China, JMTV has been detected in several parts of the world, primarily in ticks, but also in other arthropods, mammals, and even humans. The study included 400 adult ticks (333 Rhipicephalus bursa, 40 Ixodes ricinus and 27 Ixodes gibbosus) previously collected from livestock and the environment in various administrative regions of Greece. The ticks were grouped into 107 pools and screened for JMTV using an in-house real-time RT-PCR protocol. JMTV was detected in 41 (38.3%) tick pools (minimum infection rate 10.2%) in five of the seven regions tested. The virus positivity differed among tick species, hosts and regions. A single JMTV-positive R. bursa tick has been previously found co-infected with Aigai virus. Five positive pools with the highest viral load (Ct range 14.61-20.36) were subjected to metagenomic next-generation sequencing. Genetic analysis based on the complete coding sequences of all four RNA segments revealed that the sequences of the Greek strains cluster within JMTV Group 1, sharing 95.41% to 97.16% nucleotide identity with their closest relatives from Kosovo, Romania, and Türkiye. The results of the study confirm the wide distribution of JMTV in ticks in Greece, providing the first comprehensive genomic data for the virus in the country and highlighting the need for surveillance studies to assess any public health risk.