Munson-McGee Jacob H, Snyder Jamie C, Young Mark J
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59715, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, CA 91768, USA.
Genes (Basel). 2018 Feb 27;9(3):128. doi: 10.3390/genes9030128.
Archaeal viruses are some of the most enigmatic viruses known, due to the small number that have been characterized to date. The number of known archaeal viruses lags behind known bacteriophages by over an order of magnitude. Despite this, the high levels of genetic and morphological diversity that archaeal viruses display has attracted researchers for over 45 years. Extreme natural environments, such as acidic hot springs, are almost exclusively populated by Archaea and their viruses, making these attractive environments for the discovery and characterization of new viruses. The archaeal viruses from these environments have provided insights into archaeal biology, gene function, and viral evolution. This review focuses on advances from over four decades of archaeal virology, with a particular focus on archaeal viruses from high temperature environments, the existing challenges in understanding archaeal virus gene function, and approaches being taken to overcome these limitations.
古菌病毒是已知的最神秘的病毒之一，这是因为迄今为止已被鉴定的数量很少。已知的古菌病毒数量比已知的噬菌体数量落后一个多数量级。尽管如此，古菌病毒所展现出的高度遗传和形态多样性在超过45年的时间里一直吸引着研究人员。极端自然环境，如酸性温泉，几乎完全由古菌及其病毒占据，这使得这些环境成为发现和鉴定新病毒的诱人场所。来自这些环境的古菌病毒为古菌生物学、基因功能和病毒进化提供了见解。本综述重点关注四十多年来古菌病毒学的进展，特别关注来自高温环境的古菌病毒、理解古菌病毒基因功能方面存在的挑战以及为克服这些限制所采取的方法。
