Open AccessCharacteristics of Wetting-Induced Bacteriophage Blooms in Biological Soil Crust
Author(s) -
Marc W. Van Goethem,
Tami L. Swenson,
Gareth Trubl,
Simon Roux,
Trent Northen
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
mbio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2161-2129
pISSN - 2150-7511
DOI - 10.1128/mbio.02287-19
Subject(s) - firmicutes , biology , prophage , metagenomics , genome , bacteriophage , host (biology) , lysogenic cycle , evolutionary biology , ecology , genetics , bacteria , gene , escherichia coli , 16s ribosomal rna
This work forms part of an overarching research theme studying the effects of a changing climate on biological soil crust (biocrust) in the Southwestern United States. To our knowledge, this study was the first to characterize bacteriophages in biocrust and offers a view into the ecology of phages in response to a laboratory wetting experiment. The phages identified here represent lineages ofCaudovirales , and we found that the dynamics of their interactions with theirFirmicutes hosts explain the collapse of a bacterial bloom that was induced by wetting. Moreover, we show that phages carried host-altering metabolic genes and found evidence of proviral infection and CRISPR-Cas repeats within host genomes. Our results suggest that phages exert controls on population density by lysing dominant bacterial hosts and that they further impact biocrust by acquiring host genes for sporulation. Future research should explore how dominant these phages are in other biocrust communities and quantify how much the control and lysis of blooming populations contributes to nutrient cycling in biocrusts.