A protein domain-based view of the virosphere-host relationship

Despite being an important and inseparable part of the biosphere, viruses are too often overlooked in several life sciences, including evolutionary biology, systems biology, and non-marine ecology. In this review, a protein domain-based view of viral proteomes, the proteomes of other organisms and the overlap between them is presented. The data show that in many viral species, viral proteins are not very well annotated with protein domains. Compared with viral proteomes, cellular proteomes are covered quite uniformly with respect to protein domains and show higher coverage. A tremendous number of virally coded domains exist; in fact, the number of protein domains in the characterised virosphere is approaching that found in Archaea, a well-accepted superkingdom. Proteins encoded by viruses contain virosphere-specific domains (i.e., not found in cellular proteomes) and/or many domains shared by viral and cellular proteomes. Virosphere-specific domains are structurally peculiar with respect to different structural measures, making them a clear source of structural and functional novelty. Viral families with RNA genomes tend to harbour more virosphere-specific domains than other viruses. Interestingly, host range preferences of different viral classes are, for the most part, not reflected by domains shared between viruses and different superkingdoms. The role of viruses in the genesis of the cellular domain repertoire is reviewed to bring them more confidently and firmly into the larger biological picture.