Abstract
BackgroundWe are profoundly ignorant about the diversity of viruses that infect the domain Archaea. Less than 100 have been identified and described and very few of these have had their genomic sequences determined. Here we report the genomic sequence of a previously undescribed archaeal virus.ResultsHaloarchaeal strains with 16S rRNA gene sequences 98% identical to Halorubrum saccharovorum were isolated from a hypersaline lake in Inner Mongolia. Two lytic viruses infecting these were isolated from the lake water. The BJ1 virus is described in this paper. It has an icosahedral head and tail morphology and most likely a linear double stranded DNA genome exhibiting terminal redundancy. Its genome sequence has 42,271 base pairs with a GC content of ~65 mol%. The genome of BJ1 is predicted to encode 70 ORFs, including one for a tRNA. Fifty of the seventy ORFs had no identity to data base entries; twenty showed sequence identity matches to archaeal viruses and to haloarchaea. ORFs possibly coding for an origin of replication complex, integrase, helicase and structural capsid proteins were identified. Evidence for viral integration was obtained.ConclusionThe virus described here has a very low sequence identity to any previously described virus. Fifty of the seventy ORFs could not be annotated in any way based on amino acid identities with sequences already present in the databases. Determining functions for ORFs such as these is probably easier using a simple virus as a model system.
Highlights
We are profoundly ignorant about the diversity of viruses that infect the domain Archaea
We have been studying both archaeal and bacterial prokaryotic diversity in Chinese salt lakes in Inner Mongolia; as part of this study we looked for virus particles associated with haloarchaea
Description of site and lake water parameters Lake Bagaejinnor is a hypersaline lake in Inner Mongolia, China [coordinates N45 08 527 E116 36 167]
Summary
We are profoundly ignorant about the diversity of viruses that infect the domain Archaea. Less than 100 have been identified and described and very few of these have had their genomic sequences determined. We report the genomic sequence of a previously undescribed archaeal virus. Thousands of viruses infecting representatives of the domain Eukarya have been described and many of their DNA/RNA genomic sequences determined [7]. %0&*HQRPLFV 2007, :410 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/410 viruses (bacteriophages) infecting representatives of the domain Bacteria have been described, at least morphologically, rather fewer DNA/RNA genomic sequences have been determined [8]. In contrast we are largely ignorant about viruses infecting representatives of the domain Archaea. Archaeal viruses having an RNA genome have not yet been identified and perhaps do not exist [9]
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