Congratulations to Nika Pende for her contribution to the new paper published in Nature Communications:

Stable coexistence between an archaeal virus and the dominant methanogen of the human gut

In this paper we characterized MSTV1, a provirus integrated in the Methanobrevibacter smithii type strain PS genome, which is sporadically induced, resulting in virion release. Based on metagenomic analysis MSTV1 represents one of the most abundant archaeal viruses in the human gastrointestinal tract. The Cryo-ET data provide the first experimental insights into the in situ assembly of tailed archaeal viruses, which is similar to the virion assembly mechanisms used by tailed bacterial viruses. Our results show that MSTV1, similar to other gut phages, coexists with its host in a stable equilibrium, highlights similarities with bacteriophages in establishing stable coexistence with their hosts in the gut.

Original article:

Baquero, D. P., Medvedeva, S., Martin-Gallausiaux, C., Pende, N., Sartori-Rupp, A., Tachon, S., Pedron, T., Debarbieux, L., Borrel, G., Gribaldo, S.,  Krupovic, M. (2024). Stable coexistence between an archaeal virus and the dominant methanogen of the human gut. Nature Communications, 15(1), 7702. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51946-x