Unraveling the archaeal virosphere: diversity, functional and virus-host interactions

Abstract

Archaea, the third domain of life, play critical roles in global biogeochemical cycles. However, their virosphere, particularly the proviruses which integrated into host genomes, remains largely unexplored. To systematically reveal the landscape of archaeal proviruses, we conducted large-scale mining of public and in-house genomic datasets spanning all presently known archaeal phyla. We identified 9,697 archaeal proviruses across 19 archaeal phyla and 366 families, which clustered into 9,123 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs). Among these, 97.2% represent novel viruses, and 81.3% could not be classified at the family level, substantially expanding the known diversity of archaeal viruses. Host range analysis revealed that many proviruses exhibit broad infectivity across archaeal lineages, with some even capable of cross-domain infection. Genomic analysis identified 178 distinct types of antiviral systems in archaeal hosts, encompassing multiple CRISPR-Cas variants and restriction-modification (RM) systems. Meanwhile, we detected 747 anti-defense genes encoded by 710 proviruses, such as anti-CRISPR and anti-RM, directly corroborating the ongoing evolutionary arms race between archaeal hosts and their viruses. Additionally, we identified 532 auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) within archaeal proviruses that are involved in key processes including carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur metabolism, indicating their potential to reprogram host metabolic pathways and thereby influence biogeochemical cycling. This study establishes a systematic global genomic atlas of archaeal proviruses, advancing our understanding of their distribution and diversity while laying the groundwork for future investigations into how AMG-mediated processes influence archaeal metabolism and ecosystem functions.