Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics

Viruses infecting prokaryotic cells (phages) are the most abundant entities of the biosphere and contain a largely uncharted wealth of genomic diversity. They play a critical role in the biology of their hosts and in ecosystem functioning at large. The classical approaches studying phages require is...

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Main Authors:	Mizuno, Carolina Megumi, Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco, Kimes, Nikole E., Ghai, Rohit
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861242/

id	pubmed-3861242
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38612422013-12-17 Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics Mizuno, Carolina Megumi Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco Kimes, Nikole E. Ghai, Rohit Research Article Viruses infecting prokaryotic cells (phages) are the most abundant entities of the biosphere and contain a largely uncharted wealth of genomic diversity. They play a critical role in the biology of their hosts and in ecosystem functioning at large. The classical approaches studying phages require isolation from a pure culture of the host. Direct sequencing approaches have been hampered by the small amounts of phage DNA present in most natural habitats and the difficulty in applying meta-omic approaches, such as annotation of small reads and assembly. Serendipitously, it has been discovered that cellular metagenomes of highly productive ocean waters (the deep chlorophyll maximum) contain significant amounts of viral DNA derived from cells undergoing the lytic cycle. We have taken advantage of this phenomenon to retrieve metagenomic fosmids containing viral DNA from a Mediterranean deep chlorophyll maximum sample. This method allowed description of complete genomes of 208 new marine phages. The diversity of these genomes was remarkable, contributing 21 genomic groups of tailed bacteriophages of which 10 are completely new. Sequence based methods have allowed host assignment to many of them. These predicted hosts represent a wide variety of important marine prokaryotic microbes like members of SAR11 and SAR116 clades, Cyanobacteria and also the newly described low GC Actinobacteria. A metavirome constructed from the same habitat showed that many of the new phage genomes were abundantly represented. Furthermore, other available metaviromes also indicated that some of the new phages are globally distributed in low to medium latitude ocean waters. The availability of many genomes from the same sample allows a direct approach to viral population genomics confirming the remarkable mosaicism of phage genomes. Public Library of Science 2013-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3861242/ /pubmed/24348267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1003987 Text en © 2013 Mizuno et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Mizuno, Carolina Megumi Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco Kimes, Nikole E. Ghai, Rohit
spellingShingle	Mizuno, Carolina Megumi Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco Kimes, Nikole E. Ghai, Rohit Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
author_facet	Mizuno, Carolina Megumi Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco Kimes, Nikole E. Ghai, Rohit
author_sort	Mizuno, Carolina Megumi
title	Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
title_short	Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
title_full	Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
title_fullStr	Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
title_full_unstemmed	Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics
title_sort	expanding the marine virosphere using metagenomics
description	Viruses infecting prokaryotic cells (phages) are the most abundant entities of the biosphere and contain a largely uncharted wealth of genomic diversity. They play a critical role in the biology of their hosts and in ecosystem functioning at large. The classical approaches studying phages require isolation from a pure culture of the host. Direct sequencing approaches have been hampered by the small amounts of phage DNA present in most natural habitats and the difficulty in applying meta-omic approaches, such as annotation of small reads and assembly. Serendipitously, it has been discovered that cellular metagenomes of highly productive ocean waters (the deep chlorophyll maximum) contain significant amounts of viral DNA derived from cells undergoing the lytic cycle. We have taken advantage of this phenomenon to retrieve metagenomic fosmids containing viral DNA from a Mediterranean deep chlorophyll maximum sample. This method allowed description of complete genomes of 208 new marine phages. The diversity of these genomes was remarkable, contributing 21 genomic groups of tailed bacteriophages of which 10 are completely new. Sequence based methods have allowed host assignment to many of them. These predicted hosts represent a wide variety of important marine prokaryotic microbes like members of SAR11 and SAR116 clades, Cyanobacteria and also the newly described low GC Actinobacteria. A metavirome constructed from the same habitat showed that many of the new phage genomes were abundantly represented. Furthermore, other available metaviromes also indicated that some of the new phages are globally distributed in low to medium latitude ocean waters. The availability of many genomes from the same sample allows a direct approach to viral population genomics confirming the remarkable mosaicism of phage genomes.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861242/
_version_	1612037926716178432

Expanding the Marine Virosphere Using Metagenomics

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