The morphogenesis of different giant viruses as additional evidence for a common origin of Nucleocytoviricota.

Large and giant DNA viruses are a monophyletic group constituting the recently established phylum Nucleocytoviricota. The virus particle morphogenesis of these viruses exhibit striking similarities. Viral factories are established in the host cells where new virions are assembled by recruiting host membranes, forming an inner lipid layer. An outer protein layer starts as a lamellar structure, commonly referred to as viral crescents, coded by the major capsid protein gene. Also, these viruses have a conserved ATPase-coding gene related to genome encapsidation. Similar properties are described for tectiviruses, putative small ancestors of giant viruses. Here we review the morphogenesis of giant viruses and discuss how the process similarities constitute additional evidence to the common origin of Nucleocytoviricota.

Structure and physiology of giant DNA viruses.

Although giant viruses have existed for millennia and possibly exerted great evolutionary influence in their environment. Their presence has only been noticed by virologists recently with the discovery of Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus in 2003. Its virion with a diameter of 500 nm and its genome larger than 1 Mpb shattered preconceived standards of what a virus is and triggered world-wide prospection studies. Thanks to these investigations many giant virus families were discovered, each with its own morphological peculiarities and genomes ranging from 0.4 to 2.5 Mpb that possibly encode more than 400 viral proteins. This review aims to present the morphological diversity, the different aspects observed in host-virus interactions during replication, as well as the techniques utilized during their investigation.

Taxonomic reorganization of family Partitiviridae and other recent progress in partitivirus research.

Phylogenetic analyses have prompted a taxonomic reorganization of family Partitiviridae (encapsidated, bisegmented dsRNA viruses that infect plants, fungi, or protozoa), the focus of this review. After a brief introduction to partitiviruses, the taxonomic changes are discussed, including replacement of former genera Partitivirus, Alphacryptovirus, and Betacryptovirus, with new genera Alphapartitivirus, Betapartitivirus, Gammapartitivirus, and Deltapartitivirus, as well as redistribution of species among these new genera. To round out the review, other recent progress of note in partitivirus research is summarized, including discoveries of novel partitivirus sequences by metagenomic approaches and mining of sequence databases, determinations of fungal partitivirus particle structures, demonstrations of fungal partitivirus transmission to new fungal host species, evidence for other aspects of partitivirus-host interactions and host effects, and identification of other fungal or plant viruses with some similarities to partitiviruses. Some outstanding questions are also discussed.