Phylogenomics of five Pseudanabaena cyanophages and evolutionary traces of horizontal gene transfer

Environmental Microbiome

Research

Jie Zhu¹  Feng Yang¹  Qing-Fa Wu¹  Kang Du¹  Cong-Zhao Zhou¹  Zi-Lu Wei¹  Wei-Fang Li¹  Yuxing Chen¹  Qiong Li¹ 

[1] School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, 230027, Hefei, Anhui, China;

关键词: Freshwater cyanophage;    Cyanobacterium;    α;    Horizontal gene transfer;    Evolutionary trace;    Lake Chaohu;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s40793-023-00461-5

 received in 2022-08-20, accepted in 2023-01-04,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAlong with the fast development and urbanization in developing countries, the waterbodies aside the growing cities become heavily polluted and highly eutrophic, thus leading to the seasonal outbreak of cyanobacterial bloom. Systematic isolation and characterization of freshwater cyanophages might provide a biological solution to control the awful blooms. However, genomic sequences and related investigations on the freshwater cyanophages remain very limited to date.ResultsFollowing our recently reported five cyanophages Pam1~Pam5 from Lake Chaohu in China, here we isolated another five cyanophages, termed Pan1~Pan5, which infect the cyanobacterium Pseudanabaena sp. Chao 1811. Whole-genome sequencing showed that they all contain a double-stranded DNA genome of 37.2 to 72.0 kb in length, with less than half of the putative open reading frames annotated with known functions. Remarkably, the siphophage Pan1 encodes an auxiliary metabolic gene phoH and constitutes, together with the host, a complete queuosine modification pathway. Proteomic analyses revealed that although Pan1~Pan5 are distinct from each other in evolution, Pan1 and Pan3 are somewhat similar to our previously identified cyanophages Pam3 and Pam1 at the genomic level, respectively. Moreover, phylogenetic analyses suggested that Pan1 resembles the α-proteobacterial phage vB_DshS-R5C, revealing direct evidence for phage-mediated horizontal gene transfer between cyanobacteria and α-proteobacteria.ConclusionIn addition to the previous reports of Pam1~Pam5, the present findings on Pan1~Pan5 largely enrich the library of reference freshwater cyanophages. The abundant genomic information provides a pool to identify novel genes and proteins of unknown function. Moreover, we found for the first time the evolutionary traces in the cyanophage that horizontal gene transfer might occur at the level of not only inter-species, but even inter-phylum. It indicates that the bacteriophage or cyanophage could be developed as a powerful tool for gene manipulation among various species or phyla.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

【 图 表 】

12888_2022_4443_Article_IEq12.gif

41116_2022_35_Article_IEq420.gif

41116_2022_35_Article_IEq405.gif

41116_2022_35_Article_IEq383.gif

Fig. 3

41116_2022_35_Article_IEq333.gif