Thanks for the comment! Originally we did write BONCAT in our manuscript. With your comment as support we might still be able to change it back in the final version.

When transported outside of the viral factory, the translation of viral mRNA takes place in a well-defined ring surrounding it. We expect these methods to be widely applicable to other viruses for the visualisation and quantification of RNA molecules.

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While viral mRNA localisation changes depending on the infection stage, transcription occurs at well-defined spots within the viral factory. The original viral cores released within the cytoplasm most likely define these spots.

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Combined with other labelling techniques, we show the #Mimivirus transcription and translation sites during an infection cycle in the amoeba host cell.

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Don't forget the #giantVirus tag! With it, it will get collected in the Giant virus feed

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also @rubengonzalez.bsky.social @sfelena.bsky.social

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Finally, by analyzing the new amoebal genomes, we discovered viral integrations (potentially from GVs) into some of them, indicating historical infections. Most notably some inserted major capsid proteins seem to potentially encode for intact proteins (work in progress)...

Read and enjoy!

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They encode few to complete tRNA sets and even genes from the translational machinery (e.g. tRNA--ligases). The host immune system may also play a role, driving viral codon usage away from its own. Moreover, its replication site (nuclear vs. cytoplasmatic) could also play a role.

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We sequenced high-quality genomes of protists known as hosts of giant viruses (GVs).

Matching of codon usage preferences is often used to predict virus-host pairs. Our analyses revealed that in GVs, codon usage alone is a poor predictor of known pairs.

Why? well, GVs have complex genomes...

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