Revisiting evolutionary trajectories and the organization of the Pleolipoviridae family.

ABSTRACT: Archaeal pleomorphic viruses belonging to the Pleolipoviridae family represent an enigmatic group as they exhibit unique genomic features and are thought to have evolved through recombination with different archaeal plasmids. However, most of our understanding of the diversity and evolutionary trajectories of this clade comes from a handful of isolated representatives. Here we present 164 new genomes of pleolipoviruses obtained from metagenomic data of Australian hypersaline lakes and publicly available metagenomic data. We perform a comprehensive analysis on the diversity and evolutionary relationships of the newly discovered viruses and previously described pleolipoviruses. We propose to classify the viruses into five genera within the Pleolipoviridae family, with one new genus represent

SUBMITTER: Alarcon-Schumacher T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10599561 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature