Mimivirus Giant Particles Incorporate a Large Fraction of Anonymous and Unique Gene Products.
From: Unité des Rickettsies, CNRS UMR 6020, IFR-48, Faculté de Médecine, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, 13385 Marseille, France. patricia.renesto@medecine.univ-mrs.fr
Journal of virology
- Publish Date: Dec 2006
- ISSN: 0022-538X
- Volume: 80
- Issue: 23
- Pages: 11678-85
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Renesto Patricia, Abergel Chantal, Decloquement Philippe, et al. Mimivirus Giant Particles Incorporate a Large Fraction of Anonymous and Unique Gene Products.. J. Virol. Dec 2006;80:11678-85
Abstract
Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus is the largest known virus in both particle size and genome complexity. Its 1.2-Mb genome encodes 911 proteins, among which only 298 have predicted functions. The composition of purified isolated virions was analyzed by using a combined electrophoresis/mass spectrometry approach allowing the identification of 114 proteins. Besides the expected major structural components, the viral particle packages 12 proteins unambiguously associated with transcriptional machinery, 3 proteins associated with DNA repair, and 2 topoisomerases. Other main functional categories represented in the virion include oxidative pathways and protein modification. More than half of the identified virion-associated proteins correspond to anonymous genes of unknown function, including 45 “ORFans.” As demonstrated by both Western blotting and immunogold staining, some of these “ORFans,” which lack any convincing similarity in the sequence databases, are endowed with antigenic properties. Thus, anonymous and unique genes constituting the majority of the mimivirus gene complement encode bona fide proteins that are likely to participate in well-integrated processes.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Acanthamoeba, Animals, DNA Viruses, DNA, Viral, Genome, Viral, Open Reading Frames, Proteome, Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization, Viral Proteins, Virion
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 16971431
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.