Institut Pasteur, Molecular Biology of the Gene in Extremophiles Unit, Department of Microbiology, F-75015 Paris, France.
Virology. 2012 Dec 20;434(2):151-61. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2012.09.017. Epub 2012 Oct 12.
Viruses are ubiquitous and can infect any of the three existing cellular lineages (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya). Despite the persisting negative public perception of these entities, scientists learnt how to domesticate some of them. The study of molecular mechanisms essential to the completion of viral cycles has greatly contributed to deciphering fundamental processes in biology. Nowadays, viruses have entered the biotechnological era and numerous applications have already been developed. Viral-derived tools are used to manipulate genetic information, detect, diagnose, control and cure infectious diseases, or even design new structural assemblies. With the recent advances in the field of metagenomics, an overwhelming amount of information on novel viruses has become available. As current tools have been historically developed from a limited number of viruses, the potential of discoveries from new archaeal, bacterial and eukaryotic viruses may be limited only by our understanding of the multiple facets of viral cycles.
病毒无处不在，可以感染现有的三个细胞谱系（古菌、细菌和真核生物）中的任何一个。尽管人们对这些生物一直存在负面看法，但科学家们已经学会了如何驯化其中的一些。对完成病毒周期至关重要的分子机制的研究极大地促进了对生物学基本过程的破译。如今，病毒已经进入生物技术时代，已经开发出了许多应用。病毒衍生的工具被用于操纵遗传信息、检测、诊断、控制和治疗传染病，甚至设计新的结构组装。随着元基因组学领域的最新进展，大量关于新型病毒的信息已经可用。由于当前的工具是从有限数量的病毒中历史上发展而来的，因此新的古菌、细菌和真核病毒的发现潜力可能仅受我们对病毒周期多方面的理解所限制。
