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

Virus adaptation to new hosts combines two steps: first, the introduction of mutations required to allow the virus to infect new hosts and then its ability to maintain the mutations during spread within the host population 33 . With this in mind, we investigated the capacity of Guarani to maintain the deletion during passage experiments using Tupanvirus Deep Ocean as a virus host. This Tupanvirus strain was selected because it enables the virophage to replicate with higher replication efficiency ( Fig. 2a and 2b) . We continuously cocultured the mutant genotype 5 times in A. castellanii and subsequently characterized its progeny after each passage using our PCR system targeting the deletion site (Fig. 4a) . The same procedure was carried out for APMV and Guarani wild-type (control) (Fig. 4b) . Passages with Tupanvirus author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.