DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Resolving the structure of phage–bacteria interactions in the context of natural diversity

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY (United States)
  2. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY (United States)
  3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); University of Vienna (Austria)

Microbial communities are shaped by viral predators. Yet, resolving which viruses (phages) and bacteria are interacting is a major challenge in the context of natural levels of microbial diversity. Thus, fundamental features of how phage-bacteria interactions are structured and evolve in the wild remain poorly resolved. Here we use large-scale isolation of environmental marine Vibrio bacteria and their phages to obtain estimates of strain-level phage predator loads, and use all-by-all host range assays to discover how phage and host genomic diversity shape interactions. We show that lytic interactions in environmental interaction networks (as observed in agar overlay) are sparse—with phage predator loads being low for most bacterial strains, and phages being host-strain-specific. Paradoxically, we also find that although overlap in killing is generally rare between tailed phages, recombination is common. Together, these results suggest that recombination during cryptic co-infections is an important mode of phage evolution in microbial communities. In the development of phages for bioengineering and therapeutics it is important to consider that nucleic acids of introduced phages may spread into local phage populations through recombination, and that the likelihood of transfer is not predictable based on lytic host range.

Research Organization:
Krell Institute, Ames, IA (United States); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); Simons Foundation; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC); WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-97ER25308
OSTI ID:
1904575
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 13; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (85)

BEDTools: The Swiss-Army Tool for Genome Feature Analysis: BEDTools: the Swiss-Army Tool for Genome Feature Analysis journal September 2014
Answering biological questions by querying k‐mer databases journal October 2012
Awk — a pattern scanning and processing language journal April 1979
Iron Chloride Flocculation of Bacteriophages from Seawater book November 2017
Taxonomic investigations of bacteriophage sensitive bacteria isolated from marine waters journal December 1983
Bacteriophage sensitivity patterns among bacteria isolated from marine waters journal September 1981
Further investigations on the concentration of marine bacteriophages in the water around Helgoland, with reference to the phage-host systems encountered journal September 1992
Meta-iPVP: a sequence-based meta-predictor for improving the prediction of phage virion proteins using effective feature representation journal June 2020
A Reverse Ecology Approach Based on a Biological Definition of Microbial Populations journal August 2019
Probing Cellular Processes with Oligo-Mediated Recombination and Using the Knowledge Gained to Optimize Recombineering journal March 2011
A Completely Reimplemented MPI Bioinformatics Toolkit with a New HHpred Server at its Core journal July 2018
Streamlining standard bacteriophage methods for higher throughput journal January 2018
Manipulating Bacterial Communities by in situ Microbiome Engineering journal April 2016
Phage–bacteria infection networks journal February 2013
HomBlocks: A multiple-alignment construction pipeline for organelle phylogenomics based on locally collinear block searching journal January 2018
A new logic for DNA engineering using recombination in Escherichia coli journal October 1998
Recombineering: a powerful new tool for mouse functional genomics journal October 2001
Ecogenomics and genome landscapes of marine Pseudoalteromonas phage H105/1 journal July 2010
Defining seasonal marine microbial community dynamics journal August 2011
Reproducibility of Vibrionaceae population structure in coastal bacterioplankton journal November 2012
Multi-scale structure and geographic drivers of cross-infection within marine bacteria and phages journal November 2012
Cyanophages infecting the oceanic cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus journal August 2003
A major lineage of non-tailed dsDNA viruses as unrecognized killers of marine bacteria journal January 2018
Near-optimal probabilistic RNA-seq quantification journal April 2016
MMseqs2 enables sensitive protein sequence searching for the analysis of massive data sets journal October 2017
The Phyre2 web portal for protein modeling, prediction and analysis journal May 2015
Virulent coliphages in 1-year-old children fecal samples are fewer, but more infectious than temperate coliphages journal January 2020
Flexible genes establish widespread bacteriophage pan-genomes in cryoconite hole ecosystems journal September 2020
The pan-immune system of bacteria: antiviral defence as a community resource journal November 2019
Taxonomic assignment of uncultivated prokaryotic virus genomes is enabled by gene-sharing networks journal May 2019
Characterizing the portability of phage-encoded homologous recombination proteins journal January 2021
Viruses of the Nahant Collection, characterization of 251 marine Vibrionaceae viruses journal July 2018
Statistical structure of host-phage interactions journal June 2011
Resistance in marine cyanobacteria differs against specialist and generalist cyanophages journal August 2019
The lambda - P22 problem journal January 2015
Interactive Tree Of Life (iTOL): an online tool for phylogenetic tree display and annotation journal October 2006
trimAl: a tool for automated alignment trimming in large-scale phylogenetic analyses journal June 2009
BEDOPS: high-performance genomic feature operations journal May 2012
InterProScan 5: genome-scale protein function classification journal January 2014
VICTOR: genome-based phylogeny and classification of prokaryotic viruses journal July 2017
fastp: an ultra-fast all-in-one FASTQ preprocessor journal September 2018
Twelve years of SAMtools and BCFtools journal January 2021
IQ-TREE: A Fast and Effective Stochastic Algorithm for Estimating Maximum-Likelihood Phylogenies journal November 2014
Fast Genome-Wide Functional Annotation through Orthology Assignment by eggNOG-Mapper journal April 2017
Rates of Mutation and Recombination in Siphoviridae Phage Genome Evolution over Three Decades journal February 2018
Detection of novel recombinases in bacteriophage genomes unveils Rad52, Rad51 and Gp2.5 remote homologs journal June 2010
Prokaryotic Virus Orthologous Groups (pVOGs): a resource for comparative genomics and protein family annotation journal October 2016
eggNOG 5.0: a hierarchical, functionally and phylogenetically annotated orthology resource based on 5090 organisms and 2502 viruses journal November 2018
Host-dependent differences in abundance, composition and host range of cyanophages from the Red Sea journal August 2014
BiMat: a MATLAB package to facilitate the analysis of bipartite networks journal August 2015
Metapopulation structure of Vibrionaceae among coastal marine invertebrates journal September 2010
A simple and efficient method for concentration of ocean viruses by chemical flocculation: Virus concentration by flocculation with iron journal August 2010
Genotypic Diversity Within a Natural Coastal Bacterioplankton Population journal February 2005
Resource Partitioning and Sympatric Differentiation Among Closely Related Bacterioplankton journal May 2008
Systematic discovery of antiphage defense systems in the microbial pangenome journal January 2018
Simple Method for Plating Escherichia coli Bacteriophages Forming Very Small Plaques or No Plaques under Standard Conditions journal August 2008
Evolution of a Vegetarian Vibrio: Metabolic Specialization of Vibrio breoganii to Macroalgal Substrates journal April 2018
Fluorescent Reporter DS6A Mycobacteriophages Reveal Unique Variations in Infectibility and Phage Production in Mycobacteria journal December 2016
Abortive Infection Mechanisms and Prophage Sequences Significantly Influence the Genetic Makeup of Emerging Lytic Lactococcal Phages journal February 2007
Use of Bacteriophage λ Recombination Functions To Promote Gene Replacement in Escherichia coli journal April 1998
Phage-Host Interaction: an Ecological Perspective journal June 2004
Resistance to Co-Occurring Phages Enables Marine Synechococcus Communities To Coexist with Cyanophages Abundant in Seawater † journal January 1993
HSP60 gene sequences as universal targets for microbial species identification: studies with coagulase-negative staphylococci journal April 1996
Limitations of Correlation-Based Inference in Complex Virus-Microbe Communities journal August 2018
k -mer Similarity, Networks of Microbial Genomes, and Taxonomic Rank journal November 2018
MUSCLE: a multiple sequence alignment method with reduced time and space complexity journal August 2004
Automated classification of tailed bacteriophages according to their neck organization journal January 2014
The use of antibiotics to improve phage detection and enumeration by the double-layer agar technique journal July 2009
Mash: fast genome and metagenome distance estimation using MinHash journal June 2016
Accelerated Profile HMM Searches journal October 2011
ClonalFrameML: Efficient Inference of Recombination in Whole Bacterial Genomes journal February 2015
PhANNs, a fast and accurate tool and web server to classify phage structural proteins journal November 2020
The λ Red Proteins Promote Efficient Recombination between Diverged Sequences: Implications for Bacteriophage Genome Mosaicism journal May 2008
Temperate Phages Acquire DNA from Defective Prophages by Relaxed Homologous Recombination: The Role of Rad52-Like Recombinases journal March 2014
Molecular Taxonomy of Phytopathogenic Fungi: A Case Study in Peronospora journal July 2009
FastTree 2 – Approximately Maximum-Likelihood Trees for Large Alignments journal March 2010
progressiveMauve: Multiple Genome Alignment with Gene Gain, Loss and Rearrangement journal June 2010
Agar Layer Method for Production of High Titer Phage Stocks. journal November 1951
Rates of Molecular Evolution in a Marine Synechococcus Phage Lineage journal August 2019
VIRIDIC—A Novel Tool to Calculate the Intergenomic Similarities of Prokaryote-Infecting Viruses journal November 2020
Understanding Bacteriophage Specificity in Natural Microbial Communities journal March 2013
Mash: fast genome and metagenome distance estimation using MinHash collection January 2016
Viruses of the Nahant Collection, characterization of 251 marine Vibrionaceae viruses collection January 2018
MetaCHIP: community-level horizontal gene transfer identification through the combination of best-match and phylogenetic approaches collection January 2019
FastViromeExplorer: a pipeline for virus and phage identification and abundance profiling in metagenomics data journal January 2018