Saline lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau harbor unique viral assemblages mediating microbial environmental adaption

The highest plateau on Earth, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, contains thousands of lakes with broad salinity and diverse and unique microbial communities. However, little is known about their co-occurring viruses. Herein, we identify 4,560 viral Operational Taxonomic Units (vOTUs) from six viromes of three...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:iScience
Main Authors: Gu, C, Liang, Y, Li, J, Shao, H, Jiang, Y, Zhou, X, Gao, C, Li, X, Zhang, W, Guo, C, He, H, Wang, H, Sung, YY, Mok, WJ, Wong, LL, Suttle, CA, McMinn, A, Tian, J, Wang, M
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cell Press 2021
Subjects:
Biological Sciences
Microbiology
Virology
ice core
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103439
http://ecite.utas.edu.au/147999
Description
Summary:The highest plateau on Earth, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, contains thousands of lakes with broad salinity and diverse and unique microbial communities. However, little is known about their co-occurring viruses. Herein, we identify 4,560 viral Operational Taxonomic Units (vOTUs) from six viromes of three saline lakes on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with less than 1% that could be classified. Most of the predicted vOTUs were associated with the dominant bacterial and archaeal phyla. Virus-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes suggest that viruses influence microbial metabolisms of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and lipid; the antibiotic resistance mediation; and their salinity adaption. The six viromes clustered together with the ice core viromes and bathypelagic ocean viromes and might represent a new viral habitat. This study has revealed the unique characteristics and potential ecological roles of DNA viromes in the lakes of the highest plateau and established a foundation for the recognition of the viral roles in plateau lake ecosystems.

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