Abstract
BackgroundSince the discovery of giant viruses infecting amoebae in 2003, many dogmas of virology have been revised and the search for these viruses has been intensified. Over the last few years, several new groups of these viruses have been discovered in various types of samples and environments.In this work, we describe the isolation of 68 giant viruses of amoeba obtained from environmental samples from Brazil and Antarctica.MethodsIsolated viruses were identified by hemacolor staining, PCR assays and electron microscopy (scanning and/or transmission).ResultsA total of 64 viruses belonging to the Mimiviridae family were isolated (26 from lineage A, 13 from lineage B, 2 from lineage C and 23 from unidentified lineages) from different types of samples, including marine water from Antarctica, thus being the first mimiviruses isolated in this extreme environment to date. Furthermore, a marseillevirus was isolated from sewage samples along with two pandoraviruses and a cedratvirus (the third to be isolated in the world so far).ConclusionsConsidering the different type of samples, we found a higher number of viral groups in sewage samples. Our results reinforce the importance of prospective studies in different environmental samples, therefore improving our comprehension about the circulation anddiversity of these viruses in nature.
Highlights
Since the discovery of giant viruses infecting amoebae in 2003, many dogmas of virology have been revised and the search for these viruses has been intensified
Viruses belonging to the Mimiviridae, Marseilleviridae, Ascoviridae family and the pandoravirus, faustovirus, pithovirus, mollivirus, kaumoebavirus, cedratvirus and pacmanvirus were incorporated to nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) group [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]
The Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), hemacolor staining and electron microscopy assays showed that 22 samples were positive for mimivirus lineage A, 17 were positive for mimivirus lineage B and 2 were positive for mimivirus lineage C
Summary
Since the discovery of giant viruses infecting amoebae in 2003, many dogmas of virology have been revised and the search for these viruses has been intensified. The giant amoebal viruses have many phenotypic and genomic features which had never been seen in other viruses before, like large viral particles presenting up to 1.5 μm in length and large double-stranded DNA genomes ranging from 350 kb in Marseilleviridae members to 2500 kb for pandoravirus [3, 4]. The use of high-throughput techniques and different species of amoebae in culture for viral isolation has allowed the discovery of a large variety of new viruses and new lineages in recent years. They have been detected and/or isolated in all continents of Earth. It is important to note that mimiviruses and marseilleviruses have been isolated from human samples, raising questions abouttheir possible role as pathogenic agents of diseases, but this possibility still under investigation, and these viruses may be components of healthy humans virome [24, 25, 28,29,30,31]
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