title: Niche-dependent genetic diversity in Antarctic metaviromes.
abstract: The metaviromes from 2 different Antarctic terrestrial soil niches have been analyzed. Both hypoliths (microbial assemblages beneath transluscent rocks) and surrounding open soils showed a high level diversity of tailed phages, viruses of algae and amoeba, and virophage sequences. Comparisons of other global metaviromes with the Antarctic libraries showed a niche-dependent clustering pattern, unrelated to the geographical origin of a given metavirome. Within the Antarctic open soil metavirome, a putative circularly permuted, ∼42kb dsDNA virus genome was annotated, showing features of a temperate phage possessing a variety of conserved protein domains with no significant taxonomic affiliations in current databases.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa ; Genome Research Institute; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Zablocki
authors.affiliation: Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics; University of the Western Cape ; Bellville, South Africa.
authors.forename: Lonnie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: van Zyl
authors.affiliation: Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa ; Genome Research Institute; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Evelien M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Adriaenssens
authors.affiliation: Genome Research Institute; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rubagotti
authors.affiliation: Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics; University of the Western Cape ; Bellville, South Africa.
authors.forename: Marla
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tuffin
authors.affiliation: The International Center for Terrestrial Antarctic Research; University of Waikato ; Hamilton, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Stephen C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Cary
authors.affiliation: Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa ; Genome Research Institute; University of Pretoria ; Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Don
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cowan
keywords: Antarctica; Caudovirales; hypolith; metaviromics; temperate phage; virophage