Ecological impacts and drivers of double-stranded DNA viral communities in the global oceans

海洋微生物生产人类呼吸的氧气的一半，并推动海洋生态系统燃料的大部分能量和营养转化。微生物病毒通过死亡改变这些微生物的影响，将基因从一个有机体转移到另一个有机体，并在感染期间对宿主细胞的新陈代谢进行重新编程。然而，目前对海洋病毒的了解仅限于少数几个特定的模型系统或研究地点。该项目将产生一个基础数据集--全球海洋病毒(GOV)--用于将新发现的病毒联系起来，并使用该数据集来评估构成病毒群落的环境条件，或病毒群落如何随时间和空间变化。此外，该项目还将通过实验识别病毒结构蛋白、生成和研究单细胞基因组数据集以将新的和丰富的病毒与其宿主细胞联系起来，从而阐明“病毒暗物质”。该项目将培训6名研究人员，并在惠灵顿学校和哥伦布科学与工业中心举办课程、研讨会和公开展览，总共将接触到大约500名学生和25万名公众。GOV数据库由来自世界表面和深海的104个病毒元基因组组成。该项目旨在分析GOV，以识别和量化全球病毒种群，然后评估这些数据的生态模式，以确定表层和深海病毒群落结构的生态驱动因素。这些模式和驱动因素将在以下背景下被解释：(I)病毒偏蛋白组学实验，以最大限度地注释具有结构的未知病毒蛋白质，(Ii)配对微生物序列数据集(元基因组和偏转录组)，将能够评估生物因素如何影响病毒群落结构，以及(Iii)单细胞扩增基因组和噬菌体FISH实验，将能够识别在GOV中发现的丰富的和新的病毒的宿主。总而言之，该项目将进一步优化最近开发的基于基因组和种群的病毒生态学方法，以建立第一个可用的全球表层和深海病毒种群地图，包括自由病毒和受感染微生物。这些分析将有助于评估和建立关于病毒在海洋微生物生态和生物地球化学中的作用的无数假说，该数据集将成为微生物和病毒生态学家了解新病毒的背景、识别微生物数据集中的病毒以及通过现象学和生态系统建模探索病毒与宿主相互作用的基本资源。GOV将通过美国国家科学基金会资助的iPLANT网络基础设施和METAVIR(http://metavir-meb.univ-bpclermont.fr/).)向公众开放

Ocean microbes produce half of the oxygen that humans breath and drive much of the energy and nutrient transformations that fuel ocean ecosystems. Viruses of microbes alter these microbial impacts through mortality, moving genes from one organism to another, and reprogramming a host cell's metabolism during infection. However, current understanding of ocean viruses is limited to just a few specific model systems or study sites. This project will produce a foundational dataset - the Global Ocean Virome (GOV) - for contextualizing newly discovered viruses, and use this dataset to evaluate the environmental conditions that structure viral communities or how viral communities change over time and space. Additionally, the project will illuminate 'viral dark matter' by experimentally identifying viral structural proteins and generating and investigating single-cell genomic datasets to link novel and abundant viruses to their host cells. The project will train 6 researchers, as well as lead to curriculum, seminars and a public exhibit at The Wellington School and the Columbus Center Of Science and Industry that will together reach approximately 500 students and 250,000 members of the public.The GOV dataset is comprised of 104 viral metagenomes from around the world's surface and deep oceans. This project seeks to analyze the GOV to identify and quantify viral populations globally, then evaluate these data for ecological patterns to determine the ecological drivers of surface and deep ocean viral community structure. These patterns and drivers will be interpreted in the context of (i) viral metaproteomic experiments to maximally annotate unknown viral proteins that are structural, (ii) paired microbial sequence datasets (metagenomes and metatranscriptomes) that will enable assessment of how biotic factors impact viral community structure and (iii) single-cell amplified genomes and phageFISH experiments that will enable identification of hosts for abundant and novel viruses identified in the GOV. In total, this project will further optimize recently developed genome- and population-based viral ecology methods to establish a first available global map of surface and deep ocean viral populations from both free viromes and infected microbes. These analyses will help evaluate and establish myriad hypotheses about viral roles in marine microbial ecology and biogeochemistry, and the dataset will be a foundational resource for microbial and viral ecologists to contextualize new viruses, identify viruses in microbial datasets, and explore virus-host interactions both phenomenologically and through ecosystem modeling. The GOV will be made publicly available through the NSF-funded iPlant Cyberinfrastructure and metaVIR (http://metavir-meb.univ-bpclermont.fr/).