Organizing the Global Diversity of Microviruses
Paul C. Kirchberger, Zachary A. Martinez, Howard Ochman
Abstract
Microviruses are the most abundant single-stranded DNA phages on the planet and an important component of the human gut virome. And yet, productive research into their biology is hampered by the inadequacies of current taxonomic ordering: microviruses are lumped into a single family and treated as a monolithic group, thereby obscuring the extent of their diversity and resulting in little comparative research. Our investigations into the diversity of microviruses define numerous groups, most lacking any isolated representatives, and point toward high-value targets for future research. To expedite microvirus discovery and comparison, we developed a pipeline that enables the fast and facile sorting of novel microvirus genomes into well-defined taxonomic groups. These improvements provide new insights into the biology of microviruses and emphasize fundamental differences between these miniature phages and their large, double-stranded DNA phage competitors.