Moller Abraham G, Liang Chun
Department of Biology, Miami University , Oxford , OH , United States.
PeerJ. 2017 Jan 10;5:e2844. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2844. eCollection 2017.
Solar salterns are excellent model ecosystems for studying virus-microbial interactions because of their low microbial diversity, environmental stability, and high viral density. By using the power of CRISPR spacers to link viruses to their prokaryotic hosts, we explored virus-host interactions in geographically diverse salterns. Using taxonomic profiling, we identified hosts such as archaeal , , and and bacterial , and we found that community composition related to not only salinity but also local environmental dynamics. Characterizing glycerol metabolism genes in these metagenomes suggested and possess most dihydroxyacetone kinase genes while possesses most glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase genes. Using two different methods, we detected fewer CRISPR spacers in -dominated compared with Halobacteriaceae-dominated saltern metagenomes. After CRISPR detection, spacers were aligned against haloviral genomes to map virus to host. While most alignments for each saltern metagenome linked viruses to , there were also alignments indicating interactions with the low abundance taxa and . Further examination of the dinucleotide and trinucleotide usage differences between paired viruses and their hosts confirmed viruses and hosts had similar nucleotide usage signatures. Detection of genes in the salterns supported the possibility of CRISPR activity. Taken together, our studies suggest similar virus-host interactions exist in different solar salterns and that the glycerol metabolism gene dihydroxyacetone kinase is associated with and .
由于其微生物多样性低、环境稳定性高和病毒密度高，太阳能盐场是研究病毒与微生物相互作用的优秀模式生态系统。通过利用CRISPR间隔序列的力量将病毒与其原核宿主联系起来，我们探索了不同地理位置盐场中的病毒-宿主相互作用。通过分类分析，我们鉴定出了古菌、 、 和细菌等宿主，并且发现群落组成不仅与盐度有关，还与当地环境动态有关。对这些宏基因组中甘油代谢基因的特征分析表明， 和 拥有大多数二羟基丙酮激酶基因，而 拥有大多数甘油-3-磷酸脱氢酶基因。使用两种不同的方法，我们检测到在以 为主的盐场宏基因组中，与以嗜盐菌科为主的盐场宏基因组相比，CRISPR间隔序列更少。在进行CRISPR检测后，将间隔序列与嗜盐病毒基因组进行比对，以将病毒映射到宿主。虽然每个盐场宏基因组的大多数比对都将病毒与 联系起来，但也有比对表明与低丰度分类群 和 存在相互作用。对配对病毒及其宿主之间二核苷酸和三核苷酸使用差异的进一步检查证实，病毒和宿主具有相似的核苷酸使用特征。在盐场中检测到 基因支持了CRISPR活性的可能性。综上所述，我们的研究表明，不同的太阳能盐场中存在相似的病毒-宿主相互作用，并且甘油代谢基因二羟基丙酮激酶与 和 有关。
