Talk:Orthornavirae

Requested move 6 November 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

---

Orthornavirae → RNA virus – These two articles, RNA virus and Orthornavirae, are about the same thing. Content from RNA virus has already been incorporated into Orthornavirae, which is now written as if it were the RNA virus article. RNA virus is the more widely used term, so it should be the title. The content should be what is currently the content of Orthornavirae. Velayinosu (talk) 02:03, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support title being 'RNA virus', which is far more widely used in the scientific literature and in the lay press. While some might prefer Orthornavirinae as more "proper" etc, WP is not the place to right great wrongs. — soupvector (talk) 05:37, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support title change to "RNA virus", which is the common name in scientific and lay literature. The Latin formal name has only 25 hits with google scholar --Guest2625 (talk) 08:56, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: believe it not not these are not synonyms. Take for example Hepatitis D virus and Tobacco virtovirus 1, viruses with RNA genomes that are not placed within Orthornavirae. IN fact there's a huge number of viruses with RNA genomes that aren't within Orthornavirae. Before you say these aren't viruses, many are classified within Riboviria, so as far as the ICTV is concerned they are viruses.

Also it seems an extremely inconsistent approach to have no article on a major ICTV group while we have articles on all other ICTV groups, per WP:CONSISTENT. I can see no policy based argument for this move. Why not keep both? We already have an RNA virus article. Just because they have been badly rewritten in accordance with individual prejudice doesn't mean what is written is correct. Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:26, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

FWIW, Mrjulesd: the hep D "virus" is not a true virus, but some satellit nucleic acid, as far as the ICTV is concerned. They put some subviral agents in Riboviria by mistake, but promptly removed them.

I have no idea why Virtovirus is in Riboviria (where the heck is the polymerase?), but I am not to argu about that. Artoria2e5 🌉 18:18, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Artoria2e5 the problem with virus nomenclature is there are differing opinions on the matter. Looking at the Hepatitis delta virus, you could classify it as as a satellite DNA, but you could classify it as a virus, as the common name suggests. We tend to base things on ICTV classification, where it is classified as a negative-sense RNA virus. If you don't believe me take a look at Negative-sense RNA Viruses > Deltavirus. Indeed it has all the hallmarks of a virus, in that it has an outer envelope enclosing an inner nucleocapsid. The confusion arises as in that the outer envelope contains HepB antigens; but the inner nucelocapsid contains HepD antigens, and doesn't include the HepB genome. So in many ways its a sort of weird hybrid of a satellite virus with a satellite nucleic acid, as it has features of both. Its the reason why the ICTV see it as an incertae sedis viral genus outside any realm.

As for virtovirus, its not included in Orthornavirae as it doesn't encode a RdRp. However its included in Riboviria as the ICTV view it as an incertae sedis genus within Ribovaria, presumably based on shared genomic elements. Jules (Mrjulesd) 01:18, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

More evidence that Orthornavirae ≠ RNA virus.

@Guest2625: I don't believe your recent edit has helped. I would like to give you a further example of why we shouldn't treat the article like the bear article.

Take a look at https://talk.ictvonline.org/ictv-reports/ictv_online_report/positive-sense-rna-viruses/w/sarthroviridae . It describes Sarthroviridae as a "positive sense RNA virus". The only fly in the ointment is that Sarthroviridae is not included within Riboviria as it is incertae sedis. So saying Orthornavirae and RNA virus are synonyms, when even the ICTV doesn't agree with this, is not helpful. Jules (Mrjulesd) 10:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I am fine with keeping the RNA virus article if it is necessary to state that satellite RNA viruses (all of your examples) are a subset of all RNA viruses. The article will need updating and general improvement, and some stuff on Orthornavirae will need to be reworded. Velayinosu (talk) 01:33, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Well I feel this article should go back to something like it was here, with perhaps some more detail. Trying to shoehorn a general article on RNA viruses was a mistake. This article should be about discussing the ICTV taxon rather than the subject of RNA viruses.

It should be noted that Retrovirus is described as a "an infectious agent belonging to the RNA virus family Retroviridae" on Nature Research no less, so some discussion of that usage should be included on the RNA virus article. Realistically if something is a virus, and it has an RNA genome, they're going to be called RNA viruses. And both of the subjects RNA virus and Orthornavirae are both notable yet distinct. Jules (Mrjulesd) 02:50, 8 November 2020 (UTC)