A Brazilian Marseillevirus Is the Founding Member of a Lineage in Family Marseilleviridae

Abstract

In 2003, Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus (APMV) was discovered as parasitizing Acanthamoeba. It was revealed to exhibit remarkable features, especially odd genomic characteristics, and founded viral family Mimiviridae. Subsequently, a second family of giant amoebal viruses was described, Marseilleviridae, whose prototype member is Marseillevirus, discovered in 2009. Currently, the genomes of seven different members of this family have been fully sequenced. Previous phylogenetic analysis suggested the existence of three Marseilleviridae lineages: A, B and C. Here, we describe a new member of this family, Brazilian Marseillevirus (BrMV), which was isolated from a Brazilian sample and whose genome was fully sequenced and analyzed. Surprisingly, data from phylogenetic analyses and comparative genomics, including mean amino acid identity between BrMV and other Marseilleviridae members and the analyses of the core genome and pan-genome of marseilleviruses, indicated that this virus can be assigned to a new Marseilleviridae lineage. Even if the BrMV genome is one of the smallest among Marseilleviridae members, it harbors the second largest gene content into this family. In addition, the BrMV genome encodes 29 ORFans. Here, we describe the isolation and genome analyses of the BrMV strain, and propose its classification as the prototype virus of a new lineage D within the family Marseilleviridae.

Morphological and Taxonomic Properties of <i>Tokyovirus</i>, the First <i>Marseilleviridae</i> Member Isolated from Japan

“…3). The Marseilleviridae family has been divided into four subclades: A, B, C, and D (2, 10, 11, 13). Subclade A includes Marseillevirus, Cannes 8 virus, Senegalvirus, and Melbournevirus.…”

“…To date, several DNA viruses of the Marseilleviridae , which were discovered as Marseillevirus in a cooling tower in Paris (8), have been reported to reside in a number of locations including rivers, the human gut, and insect bodies. They include Lausannevirus from the Seine River (France), Senegalvirus from an African human gut microbiota, Cannes 8 virus from a cooling tower in Cannes (France), Tunisvirus from fountain water in Tunis (Tunisia), Insectomime virus from insect larvae ( Eristalis tenax ) in Tunisia, Melbournevirus from a freshwater pond in Melbourne (Australia), Port-Miou virus from a submarine spring in the Cassis Port-Miou Calanque, and Brazilian Marseillevirus from a sewage sample from Brazil (2, 3, 7, 11–13, 16, 27). Marseillevirus -like viruses have also been found in healthy human blood, suggesting that giant viruses are part of the human blood virome (21).…”

Cedratvirus, a Double-Cork Structured Giant Virus, is a Distant Relative of Pithoviruses

“…When considering members of the four distinct lineages described in Marseilleviridae , the viral family was found to be the closest to pithoviruses [31,32]. Some degrees of genomic conservation, and highly similar GC%, are noted between the Marseilleviridae members.…”

A machine-compiled microbial supertree from figure-mining thousands of papers

“…Methods for synthesising larger trees ('supertrees') from a collection of smaller trees exist, but supertrees are rarely created because of the scarcity of published trees in semantic, reusable forms , Drew et al 2013, Magee et al 2014. Although formats and ontologies exist (e.g.…”

“…The data underlying articles are often not published in the first place (Wicherts et al 2006,Drew et al 2013,Magee et al 2014,Caetano and Aisenberg 2014 • Some journals allow data to be "embargoed" and not made available for up to 10 years after the publication of an associated article (Roche et al 2014) • When data are published, it can be in a manner that is not machine-readable. Data are frequently obfuscated in pixel-based figures, and even where data are tabulated the formatting is often esoteric.…”