Background: During the last two decades, structural biology analyses have shown that viruses infecting hosts far apart in evolution share similar architectural features, prompting a new virus classification based on structural lineages. Until recently, only a few prokaryotic viruses had been described for one of the lineages, whose main characteristic is a capsid protein with a perpendicular double jelly roll.
Main body: Metagenomics analyses are showing that the variety of prokaryotic viruses encoding double jelly roll capsid proteins is much larger than previously thought. The newly discovered viruses have novel genome organisations with interesting implications for virus structure, function and evolution. There are also indications of their having a significant ecological impact.
Conclusion: Viruses with double jelly roll capsid proteins that infect prokaryotic hosts form a large part of the virosphere that had so far gone unnoticed. Their discovery by metagenomics is only a first step towards many more exciting findings. Work needs to be invested in isolating these viruses and their hosts, characterizing the structure and function of the proteins their genomes encode, and eventually access the wealth of biological information they may hold.
Keywords: Bacteriophages; Double jelly roll; Metagenomics.