title: Four newly isolated fuselloviruses from extreme geothermal environments reveal unusual morphologies and a possible interviral recombination mechanism.
abstract: Spindle-shaped virus-like particles are abundant in extreme geothermal environments, from which five spindle-shaped viral species have been isolated to date. They infect members of the hyperthermophilic archaeal genus Sulfolobus, and constitute the Fuselloviridae, a family of double-stranded DNA viruses. Here we present four new members of this family, all from terrestrial acidic hot springs. Two of the new viruses exhibit a novel morphotype for their proposed attachment structures, and specific features of their genome sequences strongly suggest the identity of the host-attachment protein. All fuselloviral genomes are highly conserved at the nucleotide level, although the regions of conservation differ between virus-pairs, consistent with a high frequency of homologous recombination having occurred between them. We propose a fuselloviral specific mechanism for interviral recombination, and show that the spacers of the Sulfolobus CRISPR antiviral system are not biased to the highly similar regions of the fusellovirus genomes.
authors.affiliation: Unite de Biologie Moleculaire du Gene chez les Extremophiles, Institut Pasteur, 25, rue du Dr Roux, F-75015 Paris, France. peterredder@gmail.com
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Redder
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Brügger
authors.forename: Shiraz A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Shah
authors.forename: Ferdinand
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Roesch
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Greve
authors.forename: Qunxin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: She
authors.forename: Christa
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schleper
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Forterre
authors.forename: Roger A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Garrett
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Prangishvili
mesh_terms: D017124:Conserved Sequence; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D019241:Fuselloviridae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D023061:Gene Order; D045482:Hot Springs / Q000821:virology*; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D016944:Sulfolobus / Q000821:virology; D015678:Viral Structural Proteins / Q000648:ultrastructure; D014771:Virion / Q000648:ultrastructure*
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral; D015678:Viral Structural Proteins