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

We then analyzed whether host acquisition of Guarani was associated with a fitness trade-off with the prototype isolate of genus Mimivirus, Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus (APMV), which has been used beforehand to propagate the wild-type genotype of Guarani 24, 25 . Indeed, experimental evolution studies for other viruses have shown that increasing the virus fitness in one host could result in a fitness penalty in another host 1 . We compared the replication efficiency of Guarani before and after its passages with each Tupanvirus strain using APMV as a giant virus host. Figure 2c shows that even after the acquisition of new virus hosts, the virophage maintained its capacity to replicate with APMV.