Abstract
Marine viruses are key drivers of host diversity, population dynamics and biogeochemical cycling and contribute to the daily flux of billions of tons of organic matter. Despite recent advancements in metagenomics, much of their biodiversity remains uncharacterized. Here we report a data set of 27,346 marine virome contigs that includes 44 complete genomes. These outnumber all currently known phage genomes in marine habitats and include members of previously uncharacterized lineages. We designed a new method for host prediction based on co-occurrence associations that reveals these viruses infect dominant members of the marine microbiome such as Prochlorococcus and Pelagibacter. A negative association between host abundance and the virus-to-host ratio supports the recently proposed Piggyback-the-Winner model of reduced phage lysis at higher host densities. An analysis of the abundance patterns of viruses throughout the oceans revealed how marine viral communities adapt to various seasonal, temperature and photic regimes according to targeted hosts and the diversity of auxiliary metabolic genes.
Highlights
Marine viruses are key drivers of host diversity, population dynamics and biogeochemical cycling and contribute to the daily flux of billions of tons of organic matter
Associations between the viral and host abundance have been described by the Kill-the-Winner theory that postulates that the higher the growth rate of a microorganism, the more likely it is to be targeted by a lytic viral infection[2,6,7,8,9]
We investigated the distribution profile of these newly discovered sequences across the oceans to further understand how environmental conditions together with microbial host abundances affect the strategies used by marine viruses to exploit their microbial hosts
Summary
Marine viruses are key drivers of host diversity, population dynamics and biogeochemical cycling and contribute to the daily flux of billions of tons of organic matter. An analysis of the abundance patterns of viruses throughout the oceans revealed how marine viral communities adapt to various seasonal, temperature and photic regimes according to targeted hosts and the diversity of auxiliary metabolic genes. Any taxonomic or functional analysis of viromes based on databases of currently known reference genomes (that are biased towards cultivable organisms) tends to overlook the majority of the community. This disadvantage hampers our capacity to describe and quantify the diversity of viral genomes throughout the marine ecosystem via metagenomics. Our findings corroborate the recently proposed Piggyback-the-Winner theory and demonstrate how viral communities respond to the different seasonal, temperature and photic regimes across the global ocean
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
