''Rudiviridae'' is a
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
of
virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...
es
with linear double stranded DNA genomes that infect
archaea
Archaea ( ) is a Domain (biology), domain of organisms. Traditionally, Archaea only included its Prokaryote, prokaryotic members, but this has since been found to be paraphyletic, as eukaryotes are known to have evolved from archaea. Even thou ...
. The viruses of this family are highly thermostable and can act as a template for site-selective and spatially controlled chemical modification. Furthermore, the two strands of the DNA are covalently linked at both ends of the genomes, which have long inverted terminal repeats. These
inverted repeat
An inverted repeat (or IR) is a single stranded sequence of nucleotides followed downstream by its complementarity (molecular biology), reverse complement. The intervening sequence of nucleotides between the initial sequence and the reverse complem ...
s are an adaptation to stabilize the genome in these extreme environments.
Taxonomy
The following genera are assigned to the family:
* ''
Azorudivirus''
* ''
Hoswirudivirus''
* ''
Icerudivirus''
* ''
Itarudivirus''
* ''
Japarudivirus''
* ''
Mexirudivirus''
* ''
Usarudivirus''
References
Virus families
{{virus-stub