Eugene V. Koonin - The world of viruses, its global organization and evolution

National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA Viruses and virus-like mobile genetic elements are ubiquitous parasites (and sometime symbionts) of all cellular life forms and the most abundant biological entities on earth. The recent, unprecedented advances of comparative genomics and metagenomics have led to the discovery of diverse novel groups of viruses and provide for a vastly improved understanding of the evolutionary relationships within the virosphere. Arguably, we are approaching the point when the global architecture of the virus world can be outlined in its entirety, and the key evolutionary events in each of its domains can be reconstructed. I will present such an outline of the global organization of the virus world and the corresponding megataxonomy structure that has been recently approved by the International Committee for Taxonomy of Viruses. In particular, I will present the comprehensive evolutionary tree of RNA vir