ReviewNature reviews. Microbiology2019
Origin of viruses: primordial replicators recruiting capsids from hosts.
Review in Nature reviews. Microbiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 110 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
110 citing papers in PubMed, 223 citations in OpenAlex.
- Small viruses reveal bidirectional evolution between HK97-fold viruses and encapsulins via procapsids.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The biology of jumbo phages.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Review
- A new family of rolling-circle replication endonucleases widespread in archaeal viruses and plasmids.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Reassessing viral origins and evolutionary placement in the tree of life.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · 2026Review
- Manipulation of the nucleotide pool in human, bacterial and plant immunity.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2026Review
- Thousands-years-old deep-sea DNA viruses reveal the evolution of human pathogenic viruses.Journal of advanced research · 2026Article
- A Systematic Evaluation of Protein Phase Separation Predictors across Diverse Protein Landscapes.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2026Article
- Detection of bacterial gene expression elements on Tobacco mosaic virus RNA using cDNA analysis.PloS one · 2026Article
- The Origin of Life and Cellular Systems: A Continuum from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biodiversity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Identification and biochemical characterization of a novel porcine circovirus associated with porcine respiratory and diarrheal diseases.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Taxonomic expansion and reorganization of Flaviviridae.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Viro3D: a comprehensive database of virus protein structure predictions.Molecular systems biology · 2025Article
- Recent advances in the inference of deep viral evolutionary history.Journal of virology · 2025Review
- Article
- Nonviral protein cages as tools to decipher and combat viral threats.Npj viruses · 2025Review
- Article
- Article
50 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Viruses are ubiquitous parasites of cellular life and the most abundant biological entities on Earth. It is widely accepted that viruses are polyphyletic, but a consensus scenario for their ultimate origin is still lacking. Traditionally, three scenarios for the origin of viruses have been considered: descent from primordial, precellular genetic elements, reductive evolution from cellular ancestors and escape of genes from cellular hosts, achieving partial replicative autonomy and becoming parasitic genetic elements. These classical scenarios give different timelines for the origin(s) of viruses and do not explain the provenance of the two key functional modules that are responsible, respectively, for viral genome replication and virion morphogenesis. Here, we outline a 'chimeric' scenario under which different types of primordial, selfish replicons gave rise to viruses by recruiting host proteins for virion formation. We also propose that new groups of viruses have repeatedly emerged at all stages of the evolution of life, often through the displacement of ancestral structural and genome replication genes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.