Rough analysis of the Insectomime genome, a new member of the family of giant viruses "Marseilleviridae". Insectomime

Giant viruses and their amoeba hosts are common in fresh water where they can coexist with the larvae of several species of insects. In our study, we screened several insect larvae to detect the presence of giant viruses using a high throughput detection method. We analyzed 86 larvae of E. tenax that were obtained from stagnant water reservoirs located in Tunisia. A virus of the Marseilleviridae family was isolated ,on co culture with Acanthamoeba polyphaga. This virus was sequenced and named Insectomime. Assembly of the sequencing reads of Insectomime resulted in two scaffolds that were 382,776 bp and 3,855 bp. Among the analyzed marseilleviruses, Tunisvirus was the most closely related to Insectomime with common 446 orthologs.