Niche-dependent genetic diversity in Antarctic metaviromes

• Main Authors: Van Zyl, Lonnie, Cary, Stephen Craig, Zablocki, Olivier, Adriaenssens, Evelien M., Rubagotti, Enrico, Tuffin, Marla I., Cowan, Don A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor and Francis 2014
• Subjects: Antarctica; Caudovirales; Hypolith; Metaviromics; Temperate phage; Virophage; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2263/49196

The metaviromes from 2 different Antarctic terrestrial soil niches have been analyzed. Both hypoliths (microbial assemblages beneath transluscent rocks) and surrounding open soils showed a high level diversity of tailed phages, viruses of algae and amoeba, and virophage sequences. Comparisons of other global metaviromes with the Antarctic libraries showed a niche-dependent clustering pattern, unrelated to the geographical origin of a given metavirome. Within the Antarctic open soil metavirome, a putative circularly permuted, »42kb dsDNA virus genome was annotated, showing features of a temperate phage possessing a variety of conserved protein domains with no significant taxonomic affiliations in current databases. National Research Foundation (South Africa) and the Genomics Research Institute of the University of Pretoria (South Africa). http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/kbac20 2015-12-31 hb2015