First evidence of host range expansion in virophages and its potential impact on giant viruses and host cells

Said Mougari; Nisrine Chelkha; Dehia Sahmi-Bounsiar; Fabrizio Di Pinto; Philippe Colson; Jonatas Abrahao; Bernard La Scola

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/780841 doi: bioRxiv preprint wild-type genotype of the virophage. Interestingly, genome analysis of Guarani isolated from Tupanvirus supernatant revealed the emergence of a new subpopulation of the virophage that shows a deletion in its genome. This deletion consists of a loss of an 81 nucleotide-long sequence located in ORF 8 that encodes a collagen-like protein ( Supplementary Fig. 1 , Table S1 ). The deletion has been detected in Guarani purified from both Tupanvirus Deep Ocean and Tupanvirus Soda Lake. We then aimed to confirm the results of the sequencing experiment by designing a PCR system that targets the deletion site, as shown in Figure 3a .