Collaborative Research: AToL: ACCESS DNA viruses: A Comprehensive survey of Circular Eukaryotic Single-Stranded DNA viruses in Invertebrates and Fungi

病毒影响所有形式的细胞生命；然而，追踪它们的进化历史是极其困难的。该项目将重建病毒生命树的一个未被研究的分支的系统发育：环状真核细胞单链DNA(CESS)病毒的系统发育。CESS病毒是已知的最小的病毒，但它们包括对全球农业造成毁灭性影响的病原体。最近，一般的环境采样发现了各种CESS病毒，这些病毒与这些病原体只有遥远的亲缘关系，并表明它们感染的宿主范围比之前认为的更广泛，包括昆虫和真菌。该项目系统地测试以前未探索过的主机，以发现、排序和分类它们的CESS病毒。这项研究的广泛影响包括培养研究生、本科生和博士后，以及K-12推广和为科学和公众创建基于网络的资源。中学生将参与采集无脊椎动物样本，这些样本将在研究生和博士后病毒基因组学病毒学培训研讨会上进行处理。项目成果将在网站上展示，以增加公众对CESS病毒的了解，并将与科学界免费分享生物信息学工具。

Viruses affect all forms of cellular life; however, it is extremely difficult to trace their evolutionary history. This project will reconstruct the phylogeny of an understudied branch of the viral tree of life: that of circular eukaryotic single-stranded DNA (CESS) viruses. CESS viruses are the smallest known viruses, yet they include pathogens with devastating impacts on agriculture worldwide. Recently, general environmental sampling has uncovered a diversity of CESS viruses that are only distantly related to these pathogens and has shown that they infect a wider range of hosts than previously thought, including insects and fungi. This project systematically tests previously unexplored hosts to discover, sequence, and classify their CESS viruses. Phylogenetic analyses will then determine how all CESS viruses are related to one another, providing a framework for classifying the CESS viral tree of life.Broader impacts of this research include training of graduate students, undergraduates, and postdocs, as well as K-12 outreach and creation of web-based resources for the scientific and general public. Middle school students will be involved in collecting invertebrate samples, which will be processed during a virology training workshop for graduate students and postdocs on CESS virus genomics. Project results will be displayed on a website to increase public knowledge about CESS viruses, and bioinformatics tools will be shared freely with the scientific community.