Gene overlapping and size constraints in the viral world

BACKGROUND: Viruses are the simplest replicating units, characterized by a limited number of coding genes and an exceptionally high rate of overlapping genes. We sought a unified evolutionary explanation that accounts for their genome sizes, gene overlapping and capsid properties. RESULTS: We performed an unbiased statistical analysis of ~100 families within ~400 genera that comprise the currently known viral world. We found that the volume utilization of capsids is often low, and greatly varies among viral families. Furthermore, although viruses span three orders of magnitude in genome length, they almost never have over 1500 overlapping nucleotides, or over four significantly overlapping genes per virus. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings undermine the generality of the compression theory, which emphasizes optimal packing and length dependency to explain overlapping genes and capsid size in viral genomes. Instead, we propose that gene novelty and evolution exploration offer better explanations to size constraints and gene overlapping in all viruses. REVIEWERS: This article was reviewed by Arne Elofsson and David Kreil. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13062-016-0128-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.