Bacteriophage genome sizes

What even is a “big” phage? Or a “small” one? I wanted a figure to discuss this very question in a talk, but I couldn’t find a plot I actually liked. The closest thing was this figure from Hyman and Abedon (2012), which is helpful, but over a decade old, the y-axis labels are mysteriously missing (?), and more importantly, there’s been a major taxonomic overhaul since then. So, I figured it was time for a much-needed update.

[2025-08-22] EDIT: I actually just came across this one too.

If you use these figures or code, please cite it like:

Quinones-Olvera, N. Bacteriophage genome sizes https://github.com/nataquinones/phage_genome_size/

Phage genome size distribution by family

(Get this plot as a png)

I did minimal data curation, so there are likely to be errors and odd outliers, but overall the numbers should be reasonable. If you spot any major issues in the code or visualization, please let me know.

A (now outdated) update of the 2012 plot

Right before the taxonomic change, I made this version, with the same families and color scheemes as the Hyman and Abedon 2012 plot:

(Get this plot as a png)

Data source and code

You can find everything about the source data and the code that produced this plot in my GitHub: nataquinones/phage_genome_size