We found a contig (assembly of DNA fragments) that appeared to contain two genes, one derived from DNA viruses, one from RNA viruses.

We found a contig (assembly of DNA fragments) that appeared to contain two genes, one derived from DNA viruses, one from RNA viruses. At first we didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it at all. I told the graduate student to go back and do it again! We confirmed this result and found the whole genome of this ‘RNA-DNA hybrid virus’ in not only samples from Boiling Springs Lake, but also in numerous other metagenomic samples. This result was particularly surprising because it was thought that DNA and RNA viruses do not recombine with each other. We showed that they clearly do. That’s really the big breakthrough that we made; it raises very important issues for the evolution of viruses and the emergence of new viruses.

 

 http://www.biomedcentral.com/biome/viral-mixing-kenneth-stedman-discusses-the-discovery-of-a-novel-class-of-viruses/