Hambly Emma, Suttle Curtis A
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia, 1461 Biological Sciences, 6270 University Blvd, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Curr Opin Microbiol. 2005 Aug;8(4):444-50. doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2005.06.005.
Natural phage communities are reservoirs of the greatest uncharacterized genetic diversity on Earth. Yet, identical phage sequences can be found in extremely different environments, which implies that there is wide circulation of viral genes among distantly related host populations. Further evidence of genetic exchange among phage and host communities is the presence in phage of genes coding for proteins that are essential for photosynthesis. These observations support the idea that a primary role of host populations in phage ecology and evolution is to serve as vectors for genetic exchange.
天然噬菌体群落是地球上最大的未被表征的基因多样性储存库。然而，在极其不同的环境中可以发现相同的噬菌体序列，这意味着病毒基因在远缘宿主群体之间广泛传播。噬菌体和宿主群落之间基因交换的进一步证据是噬菌体中存在编码光合作用必需蛋白质的基因。这些观察结果支持了这样一种观点，即宿主群体在噬菌体生态和进化中的主要作用是充当基因交换的载体。
