Hidden in the permafrost

The last decade witnessed the discovery of four families of giant viruses infecting Acanthamoeba. They have genome encoding from 500 to 2000 genes, a large fraction of which encoding proteins of unknown origin. These unique proteins meant to recognize and manipulate the same building blocks as cells raise the question on their origin as well as the role viruses played in the cellular word evolution. The Mimiviridae and the Pandoraviridae are increasingly populated by members from very diverse habitats and are ubiquitous on the planet. After prospecting the space, we went back in the past and isolated two other giant virus families from a 30,000 years old permafrost sample, Pithovirus and Mollivirus sibericum. A metagenomics study of the sample was performed to inventory its biodiversity and assess to what extend the host and the viruses were dominant. I will describe the two sequencing approaches which have been used and compare the results.

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2: Philippe N, Legendre M, Doutre G, Couté Y, Poirot O, Lescot M, Arslan D, Seltzer V, Bertaux L, Bruley C, Garin J, Claverie JM, Abergel C. Pandoraviruses:amoeba viruses with genomes up to 2.5 Mb reaching that of parasitic eukaryotes. Science. 2013 Jul 19;341(6143):281-6.
3: Legendre M, Bartoli J, Shmakova L, Jeudy S, Labadie K, Adrait A, Lescot M, Poirot O, Bertaux L, Bruley C, Couté Y, Rivkina E, Abergel C, Claverie JM. Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Mar 18;111(11):4274-9.
4: Legendre M, Lartigue A, Bertaux L, Jeudy S, Bartoli J, Lescot M, Alempic JM, Ramus C, Bruley C, Labadie K, Shmakova L, Rivkina E, Couté Y, Abergel C, Claverie JM. In-depth study of Mollivirus sibericum, a new 30,000-y-old giant virus infecting Acanthamoeba. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Sep 22;112(38):E5327-35.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International

Keywords: metagenomics

Remote created date: 2016-12-16

Remote updated date: 2017-01-11


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