Broad Environmental Tolerance for a Salicola Host-Phage Pair Isolated from the Cargill Solar Saltworks, Newark, CA, USA.

Meghan L Rodela,Allison Peterson,Jesse G Dillon,Shereen Sabet

doi:10.3390/microorganisms7040106

Meghan L Rodela, Allison Peterson + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms7040106

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Journal: Microorganisms	Publication Date: Apr 19, 2019
Citations: 10	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: California State University, Long Beach

Abstract

Phages greatly influence the ecology and evolution of their bacterial hosts; however, compared to hosts, a relatively low number of phages, especially halophilic phages, have been studied. This study describes a comparative investigation of physicochemical tolerance between a strain of the halophilic bacterium, Salicola, isolated from the Cargill Saltworks (Newark, CA, USA) and its associated phage. The host grew in media between pH 6–8.5, had a salinity growth optimum of 20% total salts (ranging from 10%–30%) and an upper temperature growth limit of 48 °C. The host utilized 61 of 190 substrates tested using BIOLOG Phenotype MicroArrays. The CGφ29 phage, one of only four reported Salicola phages, is a DNA virus of the Siphoviridae family. Overall, the phage tolerated a broader range of environmental conditions than its host (salinity 0–30% total salts; pH 3–9; upper thermal limit 80 °C) and is the most thermotolerant halophilic phage ever reported. This study is the most comprehensive investigation to date of a Salicola host–phage pair and provides novel insights into extreme environmental tolerances among bacteriophages.

Highlights

Viruses have been found to infect cells in all three domains of life and are ubiquitous and abundant with an estimated 1031 viruses on the planet [1,2,3]
Marine host–virus systems have been relatively well studied; but few studies exist for host–virus interactions in extreme hypersaline environments, especially for halophilic bacterial host–phage pairs [11,12,13,14]
The purpose of this study was to perform a comparative examination of a Salicola host–phage pair isolated from the Cargill saltern

Summary

Introduction

Viruses have been found to infect cells in all three domains of life and are ubiquitous and abundant with an estimated 1031 viruses on the planet [1,2,3]. Salterns have been shown to contain diverse communities of viruses, especially those that infect halophilic prokaryotes [34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44]; the virus populations in many salterns remain uninvestigated. They represent excellent habitats for uncovering novel haloviruses displaying extreme environmental tolerances

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