Yaravirus is an amoebic virus (a virus that reproduces in amoeba) tentatively placed in phylum Nucleocytoviricota, discovered in the waters of Lake Pampulha in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2020. The virus was found to be significantly smaller than any known amoebic virus, and is notable in that 90% of its genome appears to have no homology to previously sequenced amino acids in other organisms.[1] The organism was named after the Brazilian mythological figure, Iara.[1]
| Yaravirus brasiliense | |
|---|---|
Virus classification 
| |
| (unranked): | Virus |
| Realm: | Varidnaviria |
| Kingdom: | Bamfordvirae |
| Family: | Yaraviridae |
| Genus: | Yaravirus |
| Species: | Yaravirus brasiliense
|
One author described the virus as one that "simply makes no sense", and as "an extreme example", noting that "of Yaravirus' 74 genes, 68 are unlike any ever found in any virus".[2] With respect to efforts by scientists to develop a megataxonomy of viruses, Yaravirus was described as "lonely and unclassifiable".[2] Another analysis describes the virus as "either highly reduced and divergent NCLDVs or, more probably, the first non-NCLDV isolated from Acanthamoeba species", also noting "an ATPase most similar to the mimivirus homologue" and a major capsid protein phylogeny that is "not compatible with that of the ATPase phylogeny", suggesting that the virus originated through a horizontal gene transfer.[3]
References
edit- ^ a b Cockburn, Harry (February 11, 2020). "Scientists discover mysterious virus with no recognisable genes". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-07.
- ^ a b Zimmer, Carl (March 24, 2020). "Welcome to the virosphere, the unimaginably vast world of virus diversity". The New York Times (via the Chicago Tribune).
- ^ Heli A. M. Mönttinen, Cedric Bicep, Tom A. Williams, Robert P. Hirt (20 September 2021). "The genomes of nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses: viral evolution writ large". Microbial Genomics. 7 (9).
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Further reading
edit- Brazilian scientists announced the discovery of a new amoebic "Yaravirus" in Lake Pampulha. (bioRxiv)(Science magazine)
- Boratto, Paulo; Oliveria, Graziele (28 January 2020). "A mysterious 80 nm amoeba virus with a near-complete "ORFan genome" challenges the classification of DNA viruses". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (28): 16579–16586. doi:10.1073/pnas.2001637117. PMC 7368276. PMID 32601223., PDF here.
- Pennisi, Elizabeth (7 February 2020). "Scientists discover virus with no recognizable genes". sciencemag.org.
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