Organisms Commons^™

Chloroviruses Lure Hosts Through Long-Distance Chemical Signaling, David Dunigan, Maitham Ahmed Al-Sammak, Zeina Al-Ameeli, Irina Agarkova, John Delong, James L. Van Etten

James Van Etten Publications

Chloroviruses exist in aquatic systems around the planet where they infect certain eukaryotic green algae that are mutualistic endosymbionts in a variety of protists and metazoans. Natural chlorovirus populations are seasonally dynamic but the precise temporal changes in these populations and the mechanisms that underlie them have, heretofore, been unclear. We recently reported the novel concept that predator/prey-mediated virus activation regulates chlorovirus population dynamics, and in the current manuscript demonstrate virus packaged chemotactic modulation of prey behavior.

Viruses have not previously been reported to act as chemotactic/chemo-attractive agents. Rather, viruses as extracellular entities are generally viewed as non-metabolically active spore-like …

Structure Of The N-Glycans From The Chlorovirus Ne-Jv-1, Immacolata Speciale, Irina Agarkova, Garry Duncan, James L. Van Etten, Cristina De Castro

James Van Etten Publications

Results from recent studies are breaking the paradigm that all viruses depend on their host machinery to glycosylate their proteins. Chloroviruses encode several genes involved in glycan biosynthesis and some of their capsid proteins are decorated with N-linked oligosaccharides with unique features. Here we describe the elucidation of the N-glycan structure of an unusual chlorovirus, NE-JV-1, that belongs to the Pbi group. The host for NE-JV-1 is the zoochlorella Micractinium conductrix. Spectroscopic analyses established that this N-glycan consists of a core region that is conserved in all of the chloroviruses. The one difference is that the residue 3OMe-l-rhamnose is …