ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Inoviridae

Members of the family Inoviridae are non-enveloped flexible filamentous bacteriophages (600–2500×6–10 nm) with supercoiled, circular, positive-sense, single-stranded DNA genomes of 5.5–10.6 kb, encoding 7–15 proteins. They absorb to the pili of Gram-negative bacteria and replicate their DNA by a rolling-circle mechanism with progeny released from cells by extrusion without killing the host. Phage DNA can persist extra-chromosomally or integrate into the bacterial genome. This is a summary of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) Report on the family Inoviridae, which is available at ictv.global/report/inoviridae.