Week 3 => viral genomes, Endosymbiotic, Symbiosis and Genome Reduction Flashcards
(71 cards)
Viruses
Viruses are entities whose genomes are elements of nucleic acid that replicate inside living cells using the cellular synthetic machinery and cause the synthesis of specialized elements [virions] that can transfer the genome to other cells
Virion
a complete virus particle that consists of an RNA or DNA core with a protein coat sometimes with external envelopes and that is the extracellular infectious form of a virus
Baltimore classification
dsDNA
ssDNA
dsRNA
(+) ssRNA
(-) ssRNA
ssRNA-RT (DNA intermediate)
dsDNA-RT (RNA intermediate)
Viruses are classified according to ____
- Nature of genome and flow “information”: The Baltimore classification (1971)
- shape and capsid structure
- presence/absence of envelope
Trend of host and Baltimore class of virus
There is no trend, very uneven distribution of virus genome type to host type
Virus abundance
- 10 million viral particles per mL of seawater, all virus in ocean contain more carbon than 75 million blue whales
- viruses are by far the most abundant biological entities in the oceans, comprising of 94% of the nucleic-acid-containig particles. HOWEER, because of their small size they only comprise approximately 5% of the biomass
‘Typical’ features of viral genomes
- There are no typical features! genomes can be linear, circular, or alternate between the two (retrovirus becoming provirus)
- Gene density is high
- Compositionally biased (e.g., A/T or G/C rich)
- Fast-evolving, divergent gene sequences
- Viral genomes are extremely diverse
Provirus
Viral form when a retrovirus reverse transcribe RNA genome and incorporate DNA into host genome
‘Types’ of viral genes
- Genes with detectable homologs in cellular life forms (i.e., detectable by molecular phylogeny)
- Virus-specific genes (no detectable holomlogs)
ORFans
Open reading frames
Homologs
Biological features, such as genes or chromosomes, that are inherited from a common ancestor
Hallmark genes
The hallmarks summarize information across multiple gene sets by emphasizing genes that display coordinate expression and represent well-defined biological processes.
NOTE: there are not many viral hallmark genes, and no such genes are shared y all viruses
What are the relative frequencies of these types of genes (virus specific genes)?
It depends on the virus. The bigger the genome, the more ORFans there are (proportionately). ‘Moderate’ to ‘large’ viral genomes are often >80% ORFan genes
Family ‘giant viruses’ belong to?
Nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA virus (NCLDV) family
What type of genome do all giant viruses have?
dsDNA
List 4 of the largest known viral genomes
1) Pandoavirus salinus (Pandoraviridae)
2) Megavirus chilensis (Mehaviridae)
3)Cotesia congreta bracovirus (polydaviridae)
4)Baccilus mageterium phage G (Caudovirales)
Mimivirus
- Giant virus in amoebae
- ‘Mimicking microbe’ (Gram-stain-positive)
- dsDNA virus
- 400 nm particle size
- 1181404 base pair genome sequence
- 1262 putative open reading frames, 10% which exhibit a similarity to proteins of known functions
- Presence of numerous genes encoding central protein-translation components including four amino-acyl transfer RNA synthases, peptide release factor 1, translation elongation factor, EF-TU, and translation initiation factor 1
- Genome exhibits 6 tRNAs
- Size and complexity of the genome challenge the established frontier between viruses and parasitic cellular organisms
Pandoraviruses
- Amoeba viruses with genomes up to 3.5 Mb reaching that of parasitic eukaryotes
- micrometer-sized ovoid particles contain DNA genomes of at least 2.5 to 1.9 megabytes
- > 93% of the 2500 genes are ORFans
- 16 genes were found to have spliceosome (i.e., eukaryotic) introns
- Some (but not all) of the translation-associated genes found in mimivirus were found in Pandora virus (And vice versa)
Example of a mimivirus gene that appears to be of host (i.e., eukaryotic) origin
Mimivirus tyrosyl-tRNA synthase gene
Three groups of giant viruses
- mimiviruses
- pithoviruses
- pandoraviruses
Key observations from investigating the genomes of the three groups of giant viruses
1) for a given viral genome, most of the genes that can be analyzed phylogenetically (which is not many) exhibit greatest similarity to eukaryotic genes, not to genes in other giant viruses
2) very few genes in giant viral genomes are most similar to those in other viruses
Virus as fourth domain of life or ‘bags of genes’? study observations/message
- translation-associated gene sin giant viruses exhibit a ‘patchy’ distribution (present in some, but not others)
- ‘Universal’ genes (i.e., those with homologs in at least two of the three domains of life) have been independently acquired by different giant viruses from their eukaryotic hosts (often Acanthamoeba, the host of mimiviruses and pandoraviruses)
- Each group of giant viruses appears to have evolved from viruses with substantially smaller gene repertoires
Yaravirus
- 80 nm amoeba virus with near-complete “ORFan genome”
- 6 tRNAs (no not match commonly used codons)
- 44924 bp dsDNA genome encoding for 74 predicted proteins
- 90% of yaravirus genes have never been described before, representing ORFans
- only 6 genes had distant homologs in public database
What are the six yaravirus genes that have distant homologs in public database?
an exonuclease/recombinase, a packaging-ATPase, a bifunctional DNA primase/polymerase and three hypothetical proteins