Viruses of hyperthermophilic Crenarchaea.
Since the discovery of the Archaea--the third domain of life--by Woese and colleagues in 1977, the subsequent developments in molecular and cell biology, and also genomics, have strongly reinforced the view that archaea and eukarya co-evolved, separately from bacteria, over a long time. However, when one examines the archaeal viruses, the picture appears complex. Most viruses that are known to infect members of the kingdom Euryarchaeota resemble bacterial viruses, whereas those associated with the kingdom Crenarchaeota show little resemblance to either bacterial or eukaryal viruses. This review summarizes our current knowledge of this group of exceptional and highly diverse archaeal viruses.
Prangishvili
David
D
Molecular Biology of the Gene in Extremophiles Unit, Institut Pasteur, rue Dr. Roux 25, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France.
Garrett
Roger A
RA
D023641:Archaeal Viruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D019615:Crenarchaeota / Q000821:virology*; D004261:DNA Replication; D016679:Genome, Viral; D014771:Virion / Q000648:ultrastructure; D018406:Virus Physiological Phenomena; D014779:Virus Replication