Chapter Three - From Spatial Metagenomics to Molecular Characterization of Plant Viruses: A Geminivirus Case Study

Publication date: 2018Source: Advances in Virus Research, Volume 101Author(s): Sohini Claverie, Pauline Bernardo, Simona Kraberger, Penelope Hartnady, Pierre Lefeuvre, Jean-Michel Lett, Serge Galzi, Denis Filloux, Gordon W. Harkins, Arvind Varsani, Darren P. Martin, Philippe RoumagnacAbstractThe number of plant viruses that are known likely remains only a vanishingly small fraction of all extant plant virus species. Consequently, the distribution and population dynamics of plant viruses within even the best-studied ecosystems have only ever been studied for small groups of virus species. Even for the best studied of these groups very little is known about virus diversity at spatial scales ranging from an individual host, through individual local host populations to global host populations. To date, metagenomics studies that have assessed the collective or metagenomes of viruses at the ecosystem scale have revealed many previously unrecognized viral species. More recently, novel georeferenced metagenomics approaches have been devised that can precisely link individual sequence reads to both the plant hosts from which they were obtained, and the spatial arrangements of these hosts. Besides illuminating the diversity and the distribution of plant viruses at the ecosystem scale, application of these “geometagenomics” approaches has enabled the direct testing of hypotheses relating to the impacts of host diversity, host spatial variations, and environmental conditions on plant...
Source: Advances in Virus Research - Category: Virology Source Type: research