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

Later in the cycle, the replication of the virophage increased progressively and caused remarkable damage to virus factories ( Fig. 6b-6e ). The latter appeared disintegrated, and virophage progeny were actively emerging from each of their pieces. Virophage multiplication was clearly correlated with a progressive degradation of Tupanvirus viral factories. Isolation and characterization of these structures have previously shown that they are composed of an arsenal of virus-encoded proteins involved in virus replication and assembly 36 . Therefore, there is some overlap between our observations and previous studies reporting that virophages hijack their giant virus-encoded machinery to express and probably replicate their genomes 35, 37 . In this study, we clearly observed that these small viruses obtain essential elements from the factories of their host viruses to propagate.