New work out! A multilayered network reveals the centrality of Nucleocytoviricota in wastewater treatment plant communities

In a collaboration with Anouk Willemsen and led by Dominik (VEE lab), we reconstructed high-quality genomes from diverse Waste-water treatment plants (61 novel nucleocytoviruses, 15 virophages and 14 polinton-like viruses). We aimed to study interactions among the players in this complex ecosystems. Through a multi-layered network analysis (looking at gene sharing, co-occurrence, and integration), we demonstrate nucleocytoviruses mediate the centrality of key interaction-hubs, and entities associated with NCVs strongly coincide with more central positions… meaning that while NCVs themselves do not rank among the most central (neither by degree or betweenness), NCV-connected microbial contigs assume dramatically elevated centrality compared to both unconnected microbes and the NCVs themselves. So, NCVs are key mediators of interaction.

Reference: 10.64898/2026.05.21.726523