A novel picornavirus was isolated from specimens of a diseased European eel (Anguilla anguilla). This virus induced a cytopathic
effect in eel embryonic kidney cells and high mortality in a controlled transmission study using elvers. Eel picornavirus
has a genome of 7,496 nucleotides that encodes a polyprotein of 2,259 amino acids. It has a typical picornavirus genome layout,
but its low similarity to known viral proteins suggests a novel species in the family Picornaviridae
