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Virologie

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Archaeoviruses Volume 14, issue 2, mars-avril 2010

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Authors
Cemagref, UR HBAN, 92185 Antony, France, Institut Pasteur, Unité de biologie moléculaire du gène chez les extrêmophiles, 25, rue du Docteur-Roux, 75015 Paris, France, CNRS UMR 8621, Institut de génétique et microbiologie, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

About 50 viruses infecting microorganisms constitutive of the life domain Archaea have been isolated since the 80s. Their morphotypes are highly diverse and their genetic content, as is the case for several other viruses, is specific to the viral domain in general and to the viral family in particular. Their hosts are hyperthermophiles, acidothermophiles, extreme halophiles, or methanogens. Recent results about archaeoviruses are presented. Some virions, due to their structural and physicochemical properties, have a high potential for applications in bionanotechnologies. In some acidothermophilic archaea, a unique virus-release mechanism was recently discovered: it relies on the building of pyramidal ultrastructures at the cell envelope. Besides, archaeal viruses and plasmids are strongly linked with each other at the evolutionary level, and even hybrid entities between plasmids and viruses exist in some acidothermophilic archaea. Finally, the study of archaeoviruses contributed to the renewal of knowledge about evolutionary history of viruses. In particular, their appearance would be earlier than the Last Universal Cellular Ancestor (LUCA) period.