Family: Herelleviridae

Subfamily Bastillevirinae

Distinguishing features

Members of this subfamily infect Bacillus and Priestia sp. including B. cereus, B. subtilis, B. thuringiensis, B. pumilus and Priestia megaterium (formerly known as Bacillus megaterium). Genomes are of 138–167 kbp and have long terminal repeats (Barylski et al., 2020, Gupta et al., 2020).

Genus demarcation criteria

Members of different Bastillevirinae genera belong to different, well-supported monophyletic clades in genome-based phylogenies and in (concatenated) marker gene phylogenies (Asare et al., 2015, Barylski et al., 2020). Members of a genus share at least 60% nucleotide identity across the genome. The genome organisation is conserved. Members of the same genus generally infect members of the same bacterial genus.