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. 2002 Oct 29;99(22):14250-5.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.202488399. Epub 2002 Oct 16.

Genomic analysis of uncultured marine viral communities

Mya Breitbart  1 , Peter Salamon, Bjarne Andresen, Joseph M Mahaffy, Anca M Segall, David Mead, Farooq Azam, Forest Rohwer
Affiliations

Genomic analysis of uncultured marine viral communities

Mya Breitbart et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Viruses are the most common biological entities in the oceans by an order of magnitude. However, very little is known about their diversity. Here we report a genomic analysis of two uncultured marine viral communities. Over 65% of the sequences were not significantly similar to previously reported sequences, suggesting that much of the diversity is previously uncharacterized. The most common significant hits among the known sequences were to viruses. The viral hits included sequences from all of the major families of dsDNA tailed phages, as well as some algal viruses. Several independent mathematical models based on the observed number of contigs predicted that the most abundant viral genome comprised 2-3% of the total population in both communities, which was estimated to contain between 374 and 7,114 viral types. Overall, diversity of the viral communities was extremely high. The results also showed that it would be possible to sequence the entire genome of an uncultured marine viral community.

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Figures

Fig 1.
Fig 1.
Genomic overview of a near-shore viral community based on sequence similarities. (A) Number of sequences from the uncultured shotgun libraries with a significant hit (E < 0.001) to GenBank. (B) Distribution of significant hits among major classes of biological entities. (C) Families of phages represented in the libraries. (D) Types of mobile elements found in the two libraries.
Fig 2.
Fig 2.
The rank abundance curves for the viral communities as predicted by the power-law model. The curve is shown in red and the standard estimates of error are shown in black.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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