Updating strategies for isolating and discovering giant viruses.

Jacques Yaacoub Bou Khalil, Julien Andreani, Bernard La Scola

Current opinion in microbiology 2016 Jun

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Almost fifteen years ago, the discovery of Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus, the first giant virus, changed how we define a virus. It was discovered incidentally in a process of isolating Legionella sp. from environmental samples in the context of pneumonia epidemics using a co-culture system with Acanthamoeba. Since then, much effort and improvement has been put into the original technique. In addition to the known families of Mimiviridae and Marseilleviridae, four new proposed families of giant viruses have been isolated: Pandoravirus, Pithovirus, Faustovirus and Mollivirus. Major improvements were based on enrichment systems, targeted use of antibiotics and high-throughput methods. The most recent development, using flow cytometry for isolation and presumptive identification systems, opens a path to large environmental surveys that may discover new giant virus families in new protozoa supports used for culture support. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Jacques Yaacoub Bou Khalil, Julien Andreani, Bernard La Scola. Updating strategies for isolating and discovering giant viruses. Current opinion in microbiology. 2016 Jun;31:80-87