State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 22;7:45142. doi: 10.1038/srep45142.
Viral community structures in complex agricultural soils are largely unknown. Electron microscopy and viromic analyses were conducted on six typical Chinese agricultural soil samples. Tailed bacteriophages, spherical and filamentous viral particles were identified by the morphological analysis. Based on the metagenomic analysis, single-stranded DNA viruses represented the largest viral component in most of the soil habitats, while the double-stranded DNA viruses belonging to the Caudovirales order were predominanted in Jiangxi-maize soils. The majority of functional genes belonged to the subsystem "phages, prophages, transposable elements, and plasmids". Non-metric multidimensional analysis of viral community showed that the environment medium type was the most important driving factor for the viral community structure. For the major viral groups detected in all samples (Microviridae and Caudovirales), the two groups gathered viruses from different sites and similar genetic composition, indicating that viral diversity was high on a local point but relatively limited on a global scale. This is a novel report of viral diversity in Chinese agricultural soils, and the abundance, taxonomic, and functional diversity of viruses that were observed in different types of soils will aid future soil virome studies and enhance our understanding of the ecological functions of soil viruses.
复杂农业土壤中的病毒群落结构在很大程度上尚不清楚。对 6 个典型的中国农业土壤样本进行了电子显微镜和病毒组学分析。通过形态分析鉴定出长尾噬菌体、球形和丝状病毒颗粒。基于宏基因组分析，单链 DNA 病毒在大多数土壤生境中代表最大的病毒成分，而属于长尾病毒目（Caudovirales）的双链 DNA 病毒在江西玉米土壤中占优势。大多数功能基因属于“噬菌体、原噬菌体、转座元件和质粒”子系统。病毒群落的非度量多维分析表明，环境介质类型是病毒群落结构的最重要驱动因素。对于在所有样本中检测到的主要病毒群（微病毒科和长尾病毒目），这两个群聚集中来自不同地点和相似遗传组成的病毒，表明病毒在局部点上的多样性很高，但在全球范围内相对有限。这是中国农业土壤中病毒多样性的新报告，在不同类型土壤中观察到的病毒的丰度、分类和功能多样性将有助于未来的土壤病毒组学研究，并增强我们对土壤病毒生态功能的理解。
