Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2016 Jun:31:80-87.
doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2016.03.004. Epub 2016 Apr 1.

Updating strategies for isolating and discovering giant viruses

Jacques Yaacoub Bou Khalil  1 , Julien Andreani  1 , Bernard La Scola  2
Affiliations
Review

Updating strategies for isolating and discovering giant viruses

Jacques Yaacoub Bou Khalil et al. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2016 Jun.

Abstract

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources