Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 12, 2026

Single Cell Micro-aspiration as an Alternative Strategy to Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting for Giant Virus Mixture Separation
Published on: October 27, 2019
Origin and evolution of eukaryotic large nucleo-cytoplasmic DNA viruses
Eugene V Koonin1, Natalya Yutin
1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. koonin@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Background/Aims:
The nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV) constitute an apparently monophyletic group that consists of 6 families of viruses infecting a broad variety of eukaryotes. A comprehensive genome comparison and maximum-likelihood reconstruction of NCLDV evolution reveal a set of approximately 50 conserved genes that can be tentatively mapped to the genome of the common ancestor of this class of eukaryotic viruses. We address the origins and evolution of NCLDV.
Results:
Phylogenetic analysis indicates that some of the major clades of NCLDV infect diverse animals and protists, suggestive of early radiation of the NCLDV, possibly concomitant with eukaryogenesis. The core NCLDV genes seem to have originated from different sources including homologous genes of bacteriophages, bacteria and eukaryotes. These observations are compatible with a scenario of the origin of the NCLDV at an early stage of the evolution of eukaryotes through extensive mixing of genes from widely different genomes.
Conclusions:
The common ancestor of the NCLDV probably evolved from a bacteriophage as a result of recruitment of numerous eukaryotic and some bacterial genes, and concomitant loss of the majority of phage genes except for a small core of genes coding for proteins essential for virus genome replication and virion formation.
More Related Videos
08:56Combining Analysis of DNA in a Crude Virion Extraction with the Analysis of RNA from Infected Leaves to Discover New Virus Genomes
Published on: July 27, 2018
12:20Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes: A Functional Genomics Tool for the Study of Positive-strand RNA Viruses
Published on: December 29, 2015
Related Concept Videos
Eukaryotic Evolution
Contrary to the endosymbiont theory, the eukaryote-first hypothesis proposes that the simpler prokaryotic and...
Viruses of Archaea
Size and Structure of Viral Genomes
Retroviruses
Conditions on Early Earth
Three-Domain System of Life