You all know tailed phages, but did you know that similar tailed viruses infect #archaea? Yes, they do! But for several 1000s of tailed phage genomes there were only 25 archaeal virus isolates with complete genomes. Here we describe 37 new ones. 1/5 biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Archaeal tailed viruses are highly diverse (14 new families!) and are not closely related to classified tailed phages. Nevertheless, bacterial and archaeal tailed viruses undeniably share a common ancestor, which likely existed before LUCA. 2/5 
These archaeal viruses carry a rich repertoire of counterdefense and metabolic genes involved in DNA and RNA metabolism (but also a ribosomal protein gene!). Many of these are also commonly encoded by tailed phages, suggesting common propagation strategies. 3/5
Our data also suggest that the global architecture of the archaeal tailed virus community is shaped through recurrent transfers between different biomes, including hypersaline, marine and anoxic environments. 4/5
This was a team effort involving friends and colleagues from 🇫🇷🇫🇮🇺🇸🇬🇧🇹🇭🇱🇹🇬🇪. @Ying74382828 @simroux_virus @DariusBio @Simmonds_Lab and twitterless Tatiana Demina, Pakorn Aiewsakun, David Prangishvili, Hanna Oksanen. 5/5
and now @TatianaDemina1 is also on Twitter!
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