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Myoviridae was a family of in the order Caudovirales. The family Myoviridae and order Caudovirales have now been abolished, with the term myovirus now used to refer to the morphology of viruses in this former family. Bacteria and archaea serve as natural hosts. There were 625 species in this family, assigned to eight subfamilies and 217 genera.
The subfamily Peduovirinae have virions with heads of 60 nm in diameter and tails of 135 × 18 nm. These phages are easily identified because contracted sheaths tend to slide off the tail core. The P" phage is the type species.
The subfamily Spounavirinae are all virulent, broad-host range phages that infect members of the Bacillota. They possess isometric heads of 87-94 nm in diameter and conspicuous Capsomere, striated 140-219 nm long tails and a double base plate. At the tail tip are globular structures now known to be the base plate spikes and short kinked tail fibers with six-fold symmetry. Members of this group usually possess large (127–142 kb) nonpermuted genomes with 3.1–20 kb terminal redundancies. The name for this subfamily is derived from SPO plus una (Latin for one).
The haloviruses HF1 and HF2 belong to the same genus but since they infect archaea rather than bacteria are likely to be placed in a separate genus once their classification has been settled.
A dwarf group has been proposed on morphological and genomic grounds. This group includes the phages Aeromonas salmonicida phage 56, Vibrio cholerae phages 138 and CP-T1, Bdellovibrio phage φ1422 and Pectobacterium carotovorum phage ZF40. Their shared characteristics include an identical virion morphology, characterized by usually short contractile tails and all have genome sizes of approximately 45 kilobases. The gene order in the structural unit of the genome is in the order: terminase—portal—head—tail—base plate—tail fibers.
The tubular tail has helical symmetry and is 16-20 nm in diameter. It consists of a central tube, a contractile sheath, a collar, a base plate, six tail pins and six long fibers. It is similar to Tectiviridae, but differs in the fact that a myovirus' tail is permanent.
Contractions of the tail require ATP. On contraction of the sheath, sheath subunits slide over each other and the tail shortens to 10–15 nm in length.
Although Myoviruses are in general lytic, lacking the genes required to become lysogenic, a number of temperate species are known.
Additionally, the following genera are unassigned to a subfamily:
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