title: Diversity and comparative genomics of Microviridae in Sphagnum- dominated peatlands.
abstract: Microviridae, a family of bacteria-infecting ssDNA viruses, is one of the still poorly characterized bacteriophage groups, even though it includes phage PhiX174, one of the main models in virology for genomic and capsid structure studies. Recent studies suggest that they are diverse and well represented in marine and freshwater virioplankton as well as in human microbiomes. However, their diversity, abundance, and ecological role are completely unknown in soil ecosystems. Here we present the comparative analysis of 17 completely assembled Microviridae genomes from 12 viromes of a Sphagnum-dominated peatland. Phylogenetic analysis of the conserved major capsid protein sequences revealed the affiliation to Gokushovirinae and Pichovirinae as well as to two newly defined subfamilies, the Aravirinae and Stokavirinae. Additionally, two new distinct prophages were identified in the genomes of Parabacteroides merdae and Parabacteroides distasonis representing a potential new subfamily of Microviridae. The differentiation of the subfamilies was confirmed by gene order and similarity analysis. Relative abundance analysis using the affiliation of the major capsid protein (VP1) revealed that Gokushovirinae, followed by Aravirinae, are the most abundant Microviridae in 11 out of 12 peat viromes. Sequences matching the Gokushovirinae and Aravirinae VP1 matching sequences, respectively, accounted for up to 4.19 and 0.65% of the total number of sequences in the corresponding virome, respectively. In this study we provide new genome information of Microviridae and pave the way toward quantitative estimations of Microviridae subfamilies.
authors.affiliation: UMR CNRS 6553 - ECOBIO, Université de Rennes 1 Rennes, France.
authors.forename: Achim
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Quaiser
authors.affiliation: UMR CNRS 6553 - ECOBIO, Université de Rennes 1 Rennes, France.
authors.forename: Alexis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dufresne
authors.affiliation: UMR CNRS 6553 - ECOBIO, Université de Rennes 1 Rennes, France.
authors.forename: Flore
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ballaud
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ USA.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Roux
authors.affiliation: CNRS, UMR 8621, Université Paris Sud Orsay, France.
authors.forename: Yvan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zivanovic
authors.affiliation: CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Génome et Environnement - UMR 6023, Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand, France.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Colombet
authors.affiliation: CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Génome et Environnement - UMR 6023, Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand, France.
authors.forename: Télesphore
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sime-Ngando
authors.affiliation: CNRS, Laboratoire Microorganismes: Génome et Environnement - UMR 6023, Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand, France.
authors.forename: André-Jean
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Francez
keywords: Aravirinae; Gokushovirinae; Microviridae; Stokavirinae; ssDNA phage; viral metagenomics; virus diversity; virus ecology