A global virome of methanogenic archaea highlights novel diversity and adaptations to the gut environment

Methanogenic archaea (methanogens) thrive in diverse artificial and natural anoxic environments, including animal gut microbiomes. Until now, viruses of methanogenic archaea have been represented by five families of tailed viruses, all infecting environmental hosts. Using availiable genomes of methanogens, a collection of human and animal gut metagenomic data and a database of CRISPR spacers we identified novel viral sequences associated with methanogens.