Distribution of soil viruses across China and their potential role in phosphorous metabolism

Environmental Microbiome

卷:17

Ana Georgina Cobián Güemes¹  Forest Rohwer¹  Cynthia Silveira¹  Ji-Zheng He²  Dan-Ting Yu²  Li-Mei Zhang³  Li Bi³  Li-Li Han³  Shuai Du³ 

[1] Department of Biology, San Diego State University;

[2] Key Laboratory for Subtropical Mountain Ecology of the Ministry of Science and Technology and Fujian Province, School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University;

[3] State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences;

关键词: Virus;    Virome;    Geographic location;    PhoH;    P metabolism;    Nucleotide synthesis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40793-022-00401-9

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Background Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the planet and drive biogeochemical cycling on a global scale. Our understanding of biogeography of soil viruses and their ecological functions lags significantly behind that of Bacteria and Fungi. Here, a viromic approach was used to investigate the distribution and ecological functions of viruses from 19 soils across China. Results Soil viral community were clustered more significantly by geographical location than type of soil (agricultural and natural). Three clusters of viral communities were identified from North, Southeast and Southwest regions; these clusters differentiated using taxonomic composition and were mainly driven by geographic location and climate factors. A total of 972 viral populations (vOTUs) were detected spanning 23 viral families from the 19 viromes. Phylogenetic analyses of the phoH gene showed a remarkable diversity and the distribution of viral phoH genes was more dependent on the environment. Notably, five proteins involved in phosphorus (P) metabolism-related nucleotide synthesis functions, including dUTPase, MazG, PhoH, Thymidylate synthase complementing protein (Thy1), and Ribonucleoside reductase (RNR), were mainly identified in agricultural soils. Conclusions The present work revealed that soil viral communities were distributed across China according to geographical location and climate factors. In addition, P metabolism genes encoded by these viruses probably drive the synthesis of nucleotides for their own genomes inside bacterial hosts, thereby affecting P cycling in the soil ecosystems.

【 授权许可】

Unknown