DOE Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Aix Marseille University, CNRS, IGS UMR7256, IMM FR3479, IM2B, IO, Marseille, France.
Nat Rev Microbiol. 2022 Dec;20(12):721-736. doi: 10.1038/s41579-022-00754-5. Epub 2022 Jul 28.
The discovery of giant viruses, with capsids as large as some bacteria, megabase-range genomes and a variety of traits typically found only in cellular organisms, was one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in biology. Until recently, most of our knowledge of giant viruses came from ~100 species-level isolates for which genome sequences were available. However, these isolates were primarily derived from laboratory-based co-cultivation with few cultured protists and algae and, thus, did not reflect the true diversity of giant viruses. Although virus co-cultures enabled valuable insights into giant virus biology, many questions regarding their origin, evolution and ecological importance remain unanswered. With advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics, our understanding of giant viruses has drastically expanded. In this Review, we summarize our understanding of giant virus diversity and biology based on viral isolates as laboratory cultivation has enabled extensive insights into viral morphology and infection strategies. We then explore how cultivation-independent approaches have heightened our understanding of the coding potential and diversity of the Nucleocytoviricota. We discuss how metagenomics has revolutionized our perspective of giant viruses by revealing their distribution across our planet's biomes, where they impact the biology and ecology of a wide range of eukaryotic hosts and ultimately affect global nutrient cycles.
巨病毒的发现，其衣壳与某些细菌一样大，基因组长达兆碱基，并且具有多种通常仅在细胞生物中发现的特征，这是生物学中最显著的突破之一。直到最近，我们对巨病毒的大部分了解都来自于约 100 种具有基因组序列的种级分离物。然而，这些分离物主要来自于实验室共培养，很少培养原生动物和藻类，因此不能反映巨病毒的真实多样性。尽管病毒共培养使我们对巨病毒生物学有了宝贵的了解，但仍有许多关于它们的起源、进化和生态重要性的问题尚未得到解答。随着测序技术和生物信息学的进步，我们对巨病毒的理解有了很大的扩展。在这篇综述中，我们根据病毒分离物总结了我们对巨病毒多样性和生物学的理解，因为实验室培养使我们对病毒形态和感染策略有了广泛的了解。然后，我们探讨了非培养方法如何提高我们对核质巨病毒门编码潜力和多样性的理解。我们讨论了宏基因组学如何通过揭示它们在我们星球生物群落中的分布，改变了我们对巨病毒的看法，它们影响着广泛的真核宿主的生物学和生态学，并最终影响全球养分循环，从而对巨病毒产生了革命性的影响。
