Cafeteria roenbergensis virus
Cafeteria roenbergensis virus (CroV) is a giant virus that infects the marine bicosoecid flagellate Cafeteria roenbergensis, a member of the microzooplankton community. History The virus was isolated from seawater samples collected from the Gulf of Mexico during 1989 to 1991, on a flagellate host that was misidentified as belonging to the genus Bodo; hence the original designation of the virus as BV-PW1. The virus was shown to be about 300 nm in diameter and have a complex internal structure, as well as evidence of a putative tail-like structure Further work on the virus indicated that the host was an isolate of the genus Cafeteria and that the genome had a G+C content of ~34%. Further analysis suggested that the helicase of the virus was phylogenetically related to those found in the family Asfarviridae, and that the virus shared properties with members of the Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses group. CroV has one of the largest genomes of all marine viruses known, consisting of ~730,000 base pairs of double-stranded DNA. Among its 544 predicted protein-coding genes are several that are usually restricted to cellular organisms, such as translation factors and enzymes for DNA repair and carbohydrate synthesis. CroV is distantly related to