Book: Leisingerviridae
Family: Leisingerviridae (Interim Report)
This is a summary page created by the ICTV Report Editors using information from associated Taxonomic Proposals and the Master Species List.
Edited by: Mart Krupovic
Posted: April 2023, updated December 2024
Summary
The family Leisingerviridae includes lytic, double-stranded DNA viruses with icosahedral capsids and non-contractile helical tails, infecting methanogenic archaea of the order Methanobacteriales (Table 1 Leisingerviridae). The family was assigned to the realm Duplodnaviria and included in the class Caudoviricetes in 2022 (Master Species List 37).
Table 1 Leisingerviridae. Characteristics of members of the family Leisingerviridae.
| Characteristic | Description |
| Example | Methanobacterium phage psiM2 (AF065411), species Psimunavirus limi, genus Psimunavirus |
| Virion | Icosahedral capsid with a diameter of approximately 55 nm and a non-contractile tail of approximately 210 nm (siphoviral morphology) (Figure 1 Leisingerviridae) |
| Genome | Linear, double-stranded DNA of 26 kbp, circularly-permuted, terminally redundant (Figure 2 Leisingerviridae) |
| Host range | Isolated from Methanothermobacter marburgensis |
| Taxonomy | Realm Duplodnaviria, kingdom Heunggongvirae, phylum Uroviricota, class Caudoviricetes, order Methanobavirales: 1 genus and 1 species (Figure 3 Leisingerviridae) |
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| Figure 1 Leisingerviridae. Schematic of virions. Image from ViralZone, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, credit: SwissBioPics. |
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| Figure 2 Leisingerviridae. Genome organisation of a member of the family Leisingerviridae. Boxes indicate open reading frames as annotated on the GenBank accession AF065411. |
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| Figure 3 Leisingerviridae. Relationships of the taxa connected to the family Leisingerviridae. |
Derivation of name
Leisingerviridae: after Thomas Leisinger, who isolated the virus.