Four newly isolated fuselloviruses from extreme geothermal environments reveal unusual morphologies and a possible interviral recombination mechanism

TY - JOUR

T1 - Four newly isolated fuselloviruses from extreme geothermal environments reveal unusual morphologies and a possible interviral recombination mechanism

AU - Redder, Peter

AU - Peng, Xu

AU - Brügger, Kim

AU - Shah, Shiraz Ali

AU - Roesch, Ferdinand

AU - Greve, Bo

AU - She, Qunxin

AU - Schleper, Christa

AU - Forterre, Patrick

AU - Garrett, Roger A

AU - Prangishvili, David

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 - Spindle-shaped virus-like particles are abundant in extreme geothermal environments, from which five spindle-shaped viral species have been isolated to date. They infect members of the hyperthermophilic archaeal genus Sulfolobus, and constitute the Fuselloviridae, a family of double-stranded DNA viruses. Here we present four new members of this family, all from terrestrial acidic hot springs. Two of the new viruses exhibit a novel morphotype for their proposed attachment structures, and specific features of their genome sequences strongly suggest the identity of the host-attachment protein. All fuselloviral genomes are highly conserved at the nucleotide level, although the regions of conservation differ between virus-pairs, consistent with a high frequency of homologous recombination having occurred between them. We propose a fuselloviral specific mechanism for interviral recombination, and show that the spacers of the Sulfolobus CRISPR antiviral system are not biased to the highly similar regions of the fusellovirus genomes.

AB - Spindle-shaped virus-like particles are abundant in extreme geothermal environments, from which five spindle-shaped viral species have been isolated to date. They infect members of the hyperthermophilic archaeal genus Sulfolobus, and constitute the Fuselloviridae, a family of double-stranded DNA viruses. Here we present four new members of this family, all from terrestrial acidic hot springs. Two of the new viruses exhibit a novel morphotype for their proposed attachment structures, and specific features of their genome sequences strongly suggest the identity of the host-attachment protein. All fuselloviral genomes are highly conserved at the nucleotide level, although the regions of conservation differ between virus-pairs, consistent with a high frequency of homologous recombination having occurred between them. We propose a fuselloviral specific mechanism for interviral recombination, and show that the spacers of the Sulfolobus CRISPR antiviral system are not biased to the highly similar regions of the fusellovirus genomes.

U2 - 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.02009.x

DO - 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.02009.x

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 19638177

SN - 1462-2912

VL - 11

SP - 2849

EP - 2862

JO - Environmental Microbiology

JF - Environmental Microbiology

IS - 11

ER -