Primordial Capsid and Spooled ssDNA Genome Structures Unravel Ancestral Events of Eukaryotic Viruses

2022/07/20 by Anna Munke, Kei Kimura, Yuji Tomaru +5 · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Bacteriophages and microbial interactions #Plant Virus Research Studies #Plant and Fungal Interactions Research

paper · doi:10.1128/mbio.00156-22

openalex publication_date 2022/07/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses are an extremely widespread group of viruses that infect diverse hosts from all three domains of life, consequently having great economic, medical, and ecological importance. In particular, bacilladnaviruses are highly abundant in marine sediments and greatly influence the dynamic appearance and disappearance of certain algae species. Despite the importance of ssDNA viruses and the last couple of years' advancements in cryo-electron microscopy, structural information on the genomes of ssDNA viruses remains limited. This paper describes two important achievements: (i) the first atomic structure of a bacilladnavirus capsid, which revealed that the capsid protein gene presumably was acquired from a ssRNA virus in early evolutionary events; and (ii) the structural organization of a ssDNA genome, which retains a spooled arrangement that previously only been observed for double-stranded viruses.

Citations

• MUSTANG: A multiple structural alignment algorithm
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Cited by

• Bacilladnaviridae [wikipedia]

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• Multiple origins of prokaryotic and eukaryotic single-stranded DNA viruses from bacterial and archaeal plasmids
• Música, extraña cosa
• Origins and evolution of viruses of eukaryotes: The ultimate modularity
• Recombination in Eukaryotic Single Stranded DNA Viruses
• Bacilladnaviridae: refined taxonomy and new insights into the biology and evolution of diatom-infecting DNA viruses