Abstract
During the past few years one of the most astonishing findings in the field of virology has been the realization that viruses that infect hosts from all three domains of life are often structurally similar. The recent burst of structural information points to a need to create a new way to organize the virosphere that, in addition to the current classification, would reflect relationships between virus families. Using the vertical β-barrel major capsid proteins and ATPases related to known viral genome-packaging ATPases as examples, we can now re-evaluate the classification of viruses and virus-like genetic elements from a structural standpoint.
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Acknowledgements
We thank J. Ravantti for his invaluable comments, and M. Jalasvuori and J.K. Bamford for sharing their unpublished data. This work was supported by the Finnish Center of Excellence Program (2006-2011) of the Academy of Finland (grants 1213467 and 1213992 to D.H.B. and grant 1210253). M.K. is supported by the Viikki Graduate School in Biosciences.
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FURTHER INFORMATION
Glossary
- Biosphere
-
The global ecological system that integrates all living organisms.
- Capsomer
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The basic structural unit of the capsid of a virus.
- Convergent evolution
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The process by which organisms that are not monophyletic independently evolve similar traits as a result of adaptation to ecological niches or similar environments.
- Divergent evolution
-
The accumulation of differences between groups that can lead to the formation of new species, usually as a result of the adaptation of different groups of the same species to different environments.
- Transposon
-
A genetic element that can move from one locus of a chromosome to another through a recombinase-mediated reaction.
- Triangulation number
-
(T). Used to describe the number of subunits that exist in a capsid: an icosahedral capsid of triangulation number T will possess 60 T subunits.
- Virosphere
-
The total sum of all viruses.
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Krupovič, M., Bamford, D. Virus evolution: how far does the double β-barrel viral lineage extend?. Nat Rev Microbiol 6, 941–948 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2033
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2033
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