Tailed bacteriophages are important in marine ecology by recycling nutrients in organic material from their hosts and are the focus of much research, and herpesviruses are associated with a variety of diseases in animals, including humans.

A common feature among viruses in Duplodnaviria is that many are able to persist in their host for long periods of time without replicating while still being able to resurface in the future.

[1][2][3] After HK97 MCPs have been synthesized by the host cell's ribosomes, the viral capsid is assembled from them with the proteins bonding to each other.

Terminase recognizes a packaging signal in the genome and cuts the nucleic acid, creating a free end that it binds to.

[6] Tailed bacteriophages are potentially the oldest lineage of viruses in the world because they are ubiquitous worldwide, only infect prokaryotes, and have a high level of diversity.

[8] Outside of Duplodnaviria, an HK97-like fold is only found in encapsulins, a type of prokaryotic nanocompartment that encapsulate a variety of cargo proteins related to the oxidative stress response.

[9] The ATPase subunit of Duplodnaviria terminases that generates energy for packaging viral DNA has the same general structural design of the P-loop fold as the packaging ATPases of double jelly roll fold MCP viruses in the realm Varidnaviria but are otherwise not directly related to each other.

[2] Realms are the highest level of taxonomy used for viruses and Duplodnaviria is one of six, the other five being Adnaviria,Monodnaviria, Riboviria, Ribozyviria and Varidnaviria.

As a result of lysis, organic material from the killed prokaryotes is released into the environment, contributing to a process called viral shunt.

Tailed bacteriophages shunt nutrients from organic material away from higher trophic levels so that they can be consumed by organisms in lower trophic levels, which has the effects of recycling nutrients and promoting increased diversity among marine life.

[14] In humans, herpesviruses usually cause various epithelial diseases such as herpes simplex, chickenpox and shingles, and Kaposi's sarcoma.

[20][21] Tailed bacteriophages were discovered independently by Frederick Twort in 1915 and Félix d'Hérelle in 1917, and they have been the focus of much research since then.

[23][24] Over time, the two groups were increasingly found to share many characteristics, and their genetic relation was formalized with the establishment of Duplodnaviria in 2019.