[The Svedberg seminar] – The world of viruses and its evolution through the lens of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics
June 2, 2025 @ 15:15 – 16:15 CEST
Eugene V. Koonin
Head of Evolutionary Genomics Group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the NIH, USA
Bio
Eugene V. Koonin is an NIH Distinguished Investigator, the leader of the Evolutionary Genomics Group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the NIH. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1978 and was awarded a PhD in Virology by the same university in 1983. He joined the NIH in 1991 and became a Senior Investigator in 1996 and a Distinguished Investigator in 2019. Dr. Koonin’s research focuses on genome evolution, especially in microbes and viruses, host-parasite coevolution, and more specifically, functions and evolution of antivirus defense systems, in particular, CRISPR-Cas. Dr. Koonin is the author of the concept and implementation of Clusters of Orthologous Genes which are central to comparative and evolutionary genomics. He also develops mathematical models of various evolutionary process and works on general theory of evolution based on physical principles. Dr. Koonin has published about 1100 research and review papers, many in premier scientific journals, that have been cited more than 265,000 times. He is also the author of the 2011 book “The Logic of Chance” which outlines a new synthesis of Evolutionary Biology. His h-index is 246 according to Google Scholar. Dr Koonin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, National Academy of Medicine of the USA, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Academy of Microbiology, a Foreign Associate of the European Molecular Biology Organization and Academia Europea, and a Doctor Honoris Causa of Universite Aix-Marseille, Wageningen University, Weizmann Institute of Science and University of Haifa.
The world of viruses and its evolution through the lens of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics
Viruses and virus-like mobile genetic elements are ubiquitous parasites or symbionts of all cellular life forms and the most abundant biological entities on earth. The recent, unprecedented advances of comparative genomics, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics have led to the discovery of diverse novel groups of viruses and a rapid expansion of the chartered region of the virosphere. These discoveries provide for a vastly improved understanding of the evolutionary relationships within the virosphere. Arguably, we are approaching the point when the global architecture of the virus world can be outlined in its entirety, and the key evolutionary events in each of its domains can be reconstructed. I will present such an outline of the global organization of the virosphere and the corresponding megataxonomy, including 7 evolutionarily coherent virus realms, that has been recently approved by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, as well as additional candidate major taxa including new realms. The expansion of the prokaryotic virosphere that now includes many groups of viruses, particularly, those with RNA genomes, previously thought to be eukaryote-specific, will be emphasized. I will further discuss the position of viruses within the wider space of replicators and the recent dramatic expansion of the “alternative virosphere” that includes viroids and diverse viroid-like viruses that seem to have evolved on multiple, independent occasions.
Host: Peter Bozhkov peter.bozhkov@slu.se
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