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Ten reasons to exclude viruses from the tree of life

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 7, pages 306–311 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

When viruses were discovered, they were accepted as missing links between the inert world and living organisms. However, this idea was soon abandoned as information about their molecular parasitic nature accumulated. Recently, the notion that viruses are living organisms that have had a role in the evolution of some essential features of cells has experienced a renaissance owing to the discovery of unusually large and complex viruses that possess typical cellular genes. Here, we contend that there is strong evidence against the notion that viruses are alive and represent ancient lineages of the tree of life.

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Figure 1: Limitations of morphology.
Figure 2: Multiple evolutionary origins of Mimivirus genes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank three anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms, T.O. Yeates and S.W. Wilhelm for permission to use the photographs shown in Figure 1, and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR JC05_44,674) and the CNRS for financial support.

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  1. David Moreira and Purificación López-García are at the Unité d'Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, UMR CNRS 8,079, Université Paris-Sud, bâtiment 360, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France.,

    David Moreira & Purificación López-García

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Correspondence to David Moreira.

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Moreira, D., López-García, P. Ten reasons to exclude viruses from the tree of life. Nat Rev Microbiol 7, 306–311 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2108

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