PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alon Philosof
AU  - Natalya Yutin
AU  - José Flores-Uribe
AU  - Itai Sharon
AU  - Eugene V. Koonin
AU  - Oded Béjà
TI  - Novel Abundant Oceanic Viruses of Uncultured Marine Group II Euryarchaeota Identified by Genome-Centric Metagenomics
AID  - 10.1101/101196
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 101196
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/18/101196.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/18/101196.full
AB  - Marine Group II Euryarchaeota (MGII) are among the most abundant microbes in the oceanic surface waters. So far, however, representatives of MGII have not been cultivated, and no viruses infecting these organisms have been described. Here we present complete genomes for 3 distinct groups of viruses assembled from metagenomic sequence datasets highly enriched for MGII. These novel viruses, which we denote Magroviruses, possess double-stranded DNA genomes of 65 to 100 kilobase in size that encode a structural module characteristic of head-tailed viruses and, unusually for archaeal and bacterial viruses, a nearly complete replication apparatus of apparent archaeal origin. The newly identified Magroviruses are widespread and abundant, and therefore are likely to be major ecological agents.