Genetic rearrangements on the Chlorovirus genome that switch between hyaluronan synthesis and chitin synthesis

Chlorella viruses or chloroviruses form polysaccharide fibers on the cell wall of host Chlorella cells after infection. Such polysaccharides are either hyaluronan synthesized by virus-encoded hyaluronan synthase (HAS) or chitin synthesized by viral chitin synthase (CHS). Some chloroviruses synthesize both hyaluronan (HA) and chitin simultaneously. To understand the relationship between “HA-synthesizing” and “chitin-synthesizing” viruses, we characterized the CVK2 genomic regions, one flanking chs and the other corresponding to PBCV-1 has and found that on CVK2 DNA, a single ORF (PBCV-1 A330R) was replaced with a 5 kbp region containing chs, ugdh2 (the second gene for UDP-glucose dehydrogenase) and two other ORFs, and that has was replaced with another chs gene. In some chloroviruses, ugdh was lost. These results suggest that chlorovirus types changed from “has viruses” to “chs viruses” or from “chs viruses” to “has viruses” by exchanging the genes.