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Updated: Nov 18, 2025

Single Cell Micro-aspiration as an Alternative Strategy to Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting for Giant Virus Mixture Separation
Published on: October 27, 2019
Giant virus-related sequences in the 5300-year-old Ötzi mummy metagenome
Gabriel Augusto Pires de Souza1,2,3, Clara Rolland1,2, Bariaa Nafeh1
1Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement (IRD), Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM), MEPHI, Aix-Marseille Univ., 27 boulevard Jean Moulin, 13005, Marseille, France.
Abstract:
Giant viruses have brought new perspectives on the virosphere. They have been increasingly described in humans, including in several metagenomic studies. Here, we searched into the metagenome of the 5300-year-old Ötzi mummy for the presence of giant virus-related sequences using MG-Digger pipeline. We found 19 reads (0.00006% of the total read number) that best matched (mean ± standard deviation (range) for e-values of 5.0E-6 ± 1.4E-6 (6.0E-5-4.0E-10) and for amino acid identity of 69.9 ± 8.7% (46.4-84.9%) and most significantly with sequences from various giant viruses, including mostly mimiviruses. This expands current knowledge on the ubiquity and relationship with humans of giant viruses.
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