The wonder world of microbial viruses

The first congress on Viruses of Microbes took place at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, on 21-25 June 2010. The advances in genomics and metagenomics reported at this meeting reveal striking and unexpected complexity of the virus world. Viruses, in particular viruses that infect prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes, are emerging as the most abundant class of biological entities on earth and a major evolutionary and geochemical force.