Giant viruses with an expanded complement of translation system components
Abstract
The discovery of giant viruses blurred the sharp division between viruses and cellular life. Giant virus genomes encode proteins considered as signatures of cellular organisms, particularly translation system components, prompting hypotheses that these viruses derived from a fourth domain of cellular life. Here we report the discovery of a group of giant viruses (Klosneuviruses) in metagenomic data. Compared with other giant viruses, the Klosneuviruses encode an expanded translation machinery, including aminoacyl transfer RNA synthetases with specificities for all 20 amino acids. Notwithstanding the prevalence of translation system components, comprehensive phylogenomic analysis of these genes indicates that Klosneuviruses did not evolve from a cellular ancestor but rather are derived from a much smaller virus through extensive gain of host genes.
Additional Information
© 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 23 November 2016; resubmitted 18 January 2017. Accepted 15 March 2017. The work conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility, is supported under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. N.Y. and E.V.K. were supported by intramural funds of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. M.W., H.D., and T.K.L. were supported by the European Research Council via the Advanced Grant project "NITRICARE 294343" and the Starting Grant "EVOCHLAMY" and by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) via project P27319-B21. This work was supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. K. Kitzinger, T. Nielsen, H. Na, P. Pjevac, F. Wascher, N. Ahlers, and J. Barrero Canosa are acknowledged for their support in various steps of the project. Klosneuvirus genome assemblies are deposited in GenBank (accession numbers KY684083 to KY684123), and metagenome read data can be accessed on the JGI data portal (http://genomeportal.jgi.doe.gov/) (accession numbers are in tables S1 to S3). Data from phylogenetic and evolutionary analyses are available online (https://bitbucket.org/berkeleylab/klosneuvirus).Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 76462
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.aal4657
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170410-065731786
- DE-AC02-05CH11231
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- NITRICARE 294343
- European Research Council (ERC)
- EVOCHLAMY
- European Research Council (ERC)
- P27319-B21
- FWF Der Wissenschaftsfonds
- John Templeton Foundation
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Created
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2017-04-10Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field