Subfamily: Bastillevirinae

Genus: Moonbeamvirus

Distinguishing features

The genome of Bacillus phage Moonbeam, the exemplar isolate of Moonbeamvirus moonbeam, the only species in the genus, is 161 239 bp with 231 unique predicted protein coding sequences (6 genes are repeated in the 1980 bp regions of terminal redundancy) and 3 tRNAs (Cadungog et al., 2015). Members of the genus infect Priestia megaterium (formerly known as Bacillus megaterium).

Species demarcation criteria

There is only one species in the genus. New members of this species will be assigned based on their being more than 95% identical in genome nucleotide sequence, including the terminal repeat region. Phages with genomes that differ by more than 5% will be assigned to different species.