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Updated: Feb 2, 2026

Utilizing Soil Density Fractionation to Separate Distinct Soil Carbon Pools
Published on: December 16, 2022
Hidden diversity of soil giant viruses
Frederik Schulz1, Lauren Alteio2, Danielle Goudeau3
1U.S. Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA, USA. fschulz@lbl.gov.
Abstract:
Known giant virus diversity is currently skewed towards viruses isolated from aquatic environments and cultivated in the laboratory. Here, we employ cultivation-independent metagenomics and mini-metagenomics on soils from the Harvard Forest, leading to the discovery of 16 novel giant viruses, chiefly recovered by mini-metagenomics. The candidate viruses greatly expand phylogenetic diversity of known giant viruses and either represented novel lineages or are affiliated with klosneuviruses, Cafeteria roenbergensis virus or tupanviruses. One assembled genome with a size of 2.4 Mb represents the largest currently known viral genome in the Mimiviridae, and others encode up to 80% orphan genes. In addition, we find more than 240 major capsid proteins encoded on unbinned metagenome fragments, further indicating that giant viruses are underexplored in soil ecosystems. The fact that most of these novel viruses evaded detection in bulk metagenomes suggests that mini-metagenomics could be a valuable approach to unearth viral giants.
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