Vilnius University virologist names RNA viruses after Baltic gods
A Vilnius University virologist has drawn on Baltic mythology, linguistics and heavy metal music to name more than a dozen newly discovered RNA viruses, highlighting an often-overlooked challenge in modern metagenomics: what to call the hundreds of new viruses identified every year.
Dr Gytis Dudas, the scientist behind the names, has contributed at least 13 Baltic-inspired virus entries to international genetic sequence databases. These include Galbūt ("Maybe" in Lithuanian), Ūsinis, Barstukas, Pikulas and Patulas, all assigned during research on mosquitoes collected in California.
The naming landscape
The convention for virus nomenclature has no single governing body with strict stylistic rules. Early large-scale discovery projects, most notably those led by Chinese research groups following the acceleration of high-throughput sequencing after 2014, tended toward geographic-host combinations. The result was names such as Wuhan Louse Fly Virus 11 and Shuangao Bedbug Virus 1. Once a virus is named and logged in an international sequence database, that name is permanent, regardless of where the virus is later found in the world.
Dr Dudas has taken a different approach. Six of his named viruses, including Pikulas, Patulas and Pecols, are variant spellings of the name of an Old Prussian underworld deity, and also serve as an homage to the Lithuanian black metal band Poccolus, which formed in the early 1990s. The irony, he notes, is that all six viruses are believed to infect fungi rather than the mosquitoes in whose samples they were found.
Other names carry precise biological meaning. Astopletus combines a Proto-Balto-Slavic root for "eight" with the Latin for "completion," reflecting the researchers' confidence that all eight genome segments of the virus had been identified. Keturi ("Four" in Lithuanian) belongs to a virus family whose genome is always divided into four RNA segments.
The "Maybe" virus
The most striking naming story belongs to Galbūt, whose Lithuanian name translates literally as "Maybe." The name was chosen as a deliberate signal of uncertainty: the virus's genetic sequence had diverged so far from known viral lineages that standard comparison methods failed to recognise it as viral at all. It was instead identified through molecular signatures left by the innate immune system of its host, the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, in work involving Professor Darren Obbard of the University of Edinburgh.
The uncertainty implied by the name proved ironic. Subsequent analysis showed Galbūt to be the most prevalent RNA virus found in fruit flies globally. Researchers later recovered its sequence from museum specimens collected nearly 200 years ago, with its stability attributed to a double-stranded RNA genome and a protective protein coat.
The broader scientific context matters here. The rapid fall in the cost of high-throughput sequencing since roughly 2014 has transformed virology from a largely disease-focused discipline into one capable of cataloguing the full diversity of viral life. A landmark 2014 study of 70 insect species in China identified at least 112 previously unknown RNA viruses. Since then, the pace of discovery has grown to hundreds or thousands of new species per year, the overwhelming majority of which infect insects, fungi or plants rather than vertebrates.
Dr Dudas argues that this reframing matters for public understanding. Vertebrates and arthropods diverged roughly 600 million years ago, making cross-kingdom host-jumping from an insect or fungal virus to a human host exceptionally unlikely. "We should think of RNA viruses as yet another, albeit highly unusual, form of life," he says.
Looking ahead, Dr Dudas and colleagues are considering opening virus naming to public participation, allowing cultural, linguistic and community references to inform the catalogue alongside purely scientific descriptors.