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Towards a more comprehensive classification of satellite viruses

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 10, page 234 (2012)Cite this article

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Our recent Comment on the nature and place of the so-called virophages in the viral world (Virophages or satellite viruses? Nature Rev. Microbiol. 9 762–763 (2011))1 has caught the attention of researchers favouring the virophage concept and initiated a debate on this matter. We welcome the Correspondence article from Desnues and Raoult (Virophages question the existence of satellite viruses. Nature Rev. Microbiol. 16 Feb 2012 (doi:10.1038/nrmicro2676-c3)2 — which follows a similar Correspondence article from Matthias Fischer3, to which we have responded previously4 — and take this occasion to reiterate our conclusion that the general biological properties and behaviour of Sputnik and Mavirus are not at all novel in the virosphere and have been previously described for satellite viruses1,4.

In their Correspondence article, Desnues and Raoult again point out the allegedly unique features of Sputnik and Mavirus: complexity of virion and genome organizations, lack of sequence similarity to other currently isolated viruses, structural relationship to viruses with double-β-barrel capsid proteins5,6, effect on helper virus production and host cell survival, intracellular localization and specific genome expression signals2. All these arguments we have addressed and refuted in our two previous communications1,4.

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Figure 1: Satellite viruses and their classification.

References

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  1. Department of Microbiology, Mart Krupovic and Virginija Cvirkaite-Krupovic are at the Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Dr. Roux, 75015 Paris, France.,

    Mart Krupovic & Virginija Cvirkaite-Krupovic

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  1. Mart Krupovic
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  2. Virginija Cvirkaite-Krupovic
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Correspondence to Mart Krupovic.

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Krupovic, M., Cvirkaite-Krupovic, V. Towards a more comprehensive classification of satellite viruses. Nat Rev Microbiol 10, 234 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2676-c4

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