Comparative glycomic analysis of <i>Mimiviridae</i> and <i>Marseilleviridae</i> uncovers host-related and lineage-specific glycosylation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Giant viruses encode unusual glycosylation machinery distinct from their amoebal hosts, raising fundamental questions about how their glycans are synthesized and diversified. Here, we present a comparative glycomic analysis of mimivirus, tokyovirus and hokutovirus, together with their common host Acanthamoeba castellanii. The main objective of this study was to determine whether giant viruses rely on host-derived N-glycosylation, or alternatively employ virus-encoded pathways to generate lineage-specific O-glycans, and to assess how these processes differ across virus families. N-glycan profiling revealed that all three viruses lack canonical eukaryotic core structures, in contrast to amoebal high-mannose N-glycans carrying pentose and phosphate residues. This finding demonstrates that giant viruses do not exploit the host secretory pathway for N-glycosylation, but instead depend on alternative mechanisms. O-glycan analyses showed lineage-specific patterns: family Marseilleviridae members tokyovirus and hokutovirus, displayed highly similar profiles, with minor virus-specific differences, whereas mimivirus exhibited structurally distinct glycans. Genomic inspection revealed that tokyovirus encodes only five glycosyltransferase-like genes, while A. castellanii harbours candidate enzymes for unusual monosaccharides. These findings clarify the distinct contributions of host and viral pathways and highlight evolutionary diversification of glycosylation among giant viruses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".