Paleovirology: Blessing or Curse of Ancient Viruses - A Review

Ancient virus genomes preserved as fossils and carried by host within their genome. Although viral genomes evolve rapidly, their rate of change slows to the same pace as that of the host’s DNA after insertion, making it possible to study viral DNA sequences that are many millions of years old. Paleovirology is the study of viral fossil records typically over prehistoric or geological timescales and the effects that these agents have had on the evolution of their hosts. Viruses sometimes heritably integrate into the genomes of their hosts, resulting in genomic features known as endogenous viral elements (EVEs). Using EVEs, the field of paleovirology investigates the long term evolution of viruses and their impact on hosts. One of the fruitful outcomes of high throughput genomics is the widespread availability of whole genome data, offering the unprecedented opportunity to investigate EVEs at a large scale. This review, highlights the utility of antiviral gene evolution for the study of paleovirology, the consequent surge in paleovirology and the main methodological techniques used to study them. EVEs can only be understood within an evolutionary framework and we outline a generalized workflow for conducting paleovirology studies.