TY - JOUR
T1 - The global virome
T2 - Not as big as we thought?
AU - Cesar Ignacio-Espinoza, J.
AU - Solonenko, Sergei A.
AU - Sullivan, Matthew B.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Christine Schirmer and Ann Gregory for assistance with manuscript preparation and critical comments on the manuscript, as well as UITS Research Computing Group and the Arizona Research Laboratories Biotech Computing for high-performance computing access and support. Funding was provided by National Science Foundation ( OCE-0961947 ), Biosphere 2 , BIO5 and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grants to MBS, a Fulbright Scholarship to JCIE, and an NSF IGERT Comparative Genomics Training Grant award to SAS.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Viruses likely infect all organisms, serving to unknown extent as genetic vectors in complex networks of organisms. Environmental virologists have revealed that these abundant nanoscale entities are global players with critical roles in every ecosystem investigated. Curiously, novel genes dominate viral genomes and metagenomes, which has led to the suggestion that viruses represent the largest reservoir of unexplored genetic material on Earth with literature estimates, extrapolating from 14 mycobacteriophage genomes, suggesting that two billion phage-encoded ORFs remain to be discovered. Here we examine (meta)genomic data available in the decade since this provocative assertion, and use 'protein clusters' to evaluate whether sampling technologies have advanced to the point that we may be able to sample 'all' of viral diversity in nature.
AB - Viruses likely infect all organisms, serving to unknown extent as genetic vectors in complex networks of organisms. Environmental virologists have revealed that these abundant nanoscale entities are global players with critical roles in every ecosystem investigated. Curiously, novel genes dominate viral genomes and metagenomes, which has led to the suggestion that viruses represent the largest reservoir of unexplored genetic material on Earth with literature estimates, extrapolating from 14 mycobacteriophage genomes, suggesting that two billion phage-encoded ORFs remain to be discovered. Here we examine (meta)genomic data available in the decade since this provocative assertion, and use 'protein clusters' to evaluate whether sampling technologies have advanced to the point that we may be able to sample 'all' of viral diversity in nature.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84885949137&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84885949137&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.coviro.2013.07.004
DO - 10.1016/j.coviro.2013.07.004
M3 - Review article
C2 - 23896279
AN - SCOPUS:84885949137
SN - 1879-6257
VL - 3
SP - 566
EP - 571
JO - Current Opinion in Virology
JF - Current Opinion in Virology
IS - 5
ER -