Oysters as hot spots for mimivirus isolation

Andrade, Kétyllen Reis; Boratto, Paulo Victor de Miranda; Rodrigues, Felipe P.; Silva, Lorena C.F.; Dornas, Fábio P.; Pilotto, Mariana Rangel; Scola, Bernard La; Almeida, Gabriel Marchesan; Kroon, Erna Geessien; Abrahão, Jônatas Santos

doi:10.1007/s00705-014-2257-2

Cited by 41 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Amoeba, however, does not have a cell wall, consistent with the observation that bald Mimivirus, which does not contain R135, infects amoeba as does the wild-type fibered virus. The possibility that Mimivirus might infect alternative hosts was also implied recently by the discovery that Mimiviruses were found to be abundant in oysters (Andrade et al, 2014). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

A Mimivirus Enzyme that Participates in Viral Entry

et al. 2015

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Summary Mimivirus was initially identified as a bacterium because its dense, 125nm-long fibers stained Gram-positive. These fibers probably play a role during the infection of some host cells. The normal hosts of Mimivirus are unknown, but in the laboratory Mimivirus is usually propagated in amoeba. The structure of R135, a major component of the fibrous outer layer of Mimivirus, has been determined to 2Å resolution. The protein's structure is similar to members of the glucose-methanol-cholin oxidoreductase family, which have an N-terminal FAD binding domain and a C-terminal substrate recognition domain. The closest homologue to R135 is an aryl alcohol oxidase that participates in lignin biodegradation of plant cell walls. Thus R135 might participate in the degradation of their normal hosts, including some lignin-containing algae.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

A Mimivirus Enzyme that Participates in Viral Entry

et al. 2015

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“…Independently of the sugar that first interacted with the mimivirus particles, attachment to any sugar prevents interaction of the viral particles with other molecules, because the fibrils are completely saturated by the carbohydrate. Mimiviruses have already been isolated from distinct animals, such as the Shan virus and the LBA111 virus from humans (25,26), Hirudovirus from the invertebrate Hirudo medicinalis (27), and some viruses that have not yet been characterized from oysters (28). Furthermore, it has already been demonstrated that mimiviruses circulate among nonhuman mammals (29).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mimivirus Fibrils Are Important for Viral Attachment to the Microbial World by a Diverse Glycoside Interaction Repertoire

Rodrigues

Silva

Dornas

et al. 2015

J Virol

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Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus (APMV) is a giant virus from the Mimiviridae family. It has many unusual features, such as a pseudoicosahedral capsid that presents a starfish shape in one of its vertices, through which the ϳ1.2-Mb double-stranded DNA is released. It also has a dense glycoprotein fibril layer covering the capsid that has not yet been functionally characterized. Here, we verified that although these structures are not essential for viral replication, they are truly necessary for viral adhesion to amoebae, its natural host. In the absence of fibrils, APMV had a significantly lower level of attachment to the Acanthamoeba castellanii surface. This adhesion is mediated by glycans, specifically, mannose and N-acetylglucosamine (a monomer of chitin and peptidoglycan), both of which are largely distributed in nature as structural components of several organisms. Indeed, APMV was able to attach to different organisms, such as Gram-positive bacteria, fungi, and arthropods, but not to Gram-negative bacteria. This prompted us to predict that (i) arthropods, mainly insects, might act as mimivirus dispersers and (ii) by attaching to other microorganisms, APMV could be ingested by amoebae, leading to the successful production of viral progeny. To date, this mechanism has never been described in the virosphere. IMPORTANCEAPMV is a giant virus that is both genetically and structurally complex. Its size is similar to that of small bacteria, and it replicates inside amoebae. The viral capsid is covered by a dense glycoprotein fibril layer, but its function has remained unknown, until now. We found that the fibrils are not essential for mimivirus replication but that they are truly necessary for viral adhesion to the cell surface. This interaction is mediated by glycans, mainly N-acetylglucosamine. We also verified that APMV is able to attach to bacteria, fungi, and arthropods. This indicates that insects might act as mimivirus dispersers and that adhesion to other microorganisms could facilitate viral ingestion by amoebae, a mechanism never before described in the virosphere.

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“…Hewson et al (2014) identified a novel Forbes sea star ( Asterias forbes ) virus (AFSSV) as the causative agent of a wasting disease condition linked to high mortality in the Forbes sea stars. On the other hand, Andrade et al (2015) showed that oysters are the hotspots for Mimivirus isolations which are the largest viruses found in the world with >1,100,000 bp length. Overall, these findings show that viral metagenomics analysis is a powerful tool able to identify novel pathogenic viruses infecting different aquatic organisms.…”

Section: Discovery Of New Viruses Using Viral Metagenomicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Advances on Virus Discovery and Diagnostic Role of Viral Metagenomics in Aquatic Organisms

et al. 2017

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The global expansion of the aquaculture industry has brought with it a corresponding increase of novel viruses infecting different aquatic organisms. These emerging viral pathogens have proved to be a challenge to the use of traditional cell-cultures and immunoassays for identification of new viruses especially in situations where the novel viruses are unculturable and no antibodies exist for their identification. Viral metagenomics has the potential to identify novel viruses without prior knowledge of their genomic sequence data and may provide a solution for the study of unculturable viruses. This review provides a synopsis on the contribution of viral metagenomics to the discovery of viruses infecting different aquatic organisms as well as its potential role in viral diagnostics. High throughput Next Generation sequencing (NGS) and library construction used in metagenomic projects have simplified the task of generating complete viral genomes unlike the challenge faced in traditional methods that use multiple primers targeted at different segments and VPs to generate the entire genome of a novel virus. In terms of diagnostics, studies carried out this far show that viral metagenomics has the potential to serve as a multifaceted tool able to study and identify etiological agents of single infections, co-infections, tissue tropism, profiling viral infections of different aquatic organisms, epidemiological monitoring of disease prevalence, evolutionary phylogenetic analyses, and the study of genomic diversity in quasispecies viruses. With sequencing technologies and bioinformatics analytical tools becoming cheaper and easier, we anticipate that metagenomics will soon become a routine tool for the discovery, study, and identification of novel pathogens including viruses to enable timely disease control for emerging diseases in aquaculture.

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Oysters as hot spots for mimivirus isolation

Cited by 41 publications

References 36 publications

A Mimivirus Enzyme that Participates in Viral Entry

A Mimivirus Enzyme that Participates in Viral Entry

Mimivirus Fibrils Are Important for Viral Attachment to the Microbial World by a Diverse Glycoside Interaction Repertoire

Current Advances on Virus Discovery and Diagnostic Role of Viral Metagenomics in Aquatic Organisms

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