title: Genome of a giant bacteriophage from a decaying Trichodesmium bloom.
abstract: De-novo assembly of a metagenomic dataset obtained from a decaying cyanobacterial Trichodesmium bloom from the New Caledonian lagoon resulted in a complete giant phage genome of 257,908bp, obtained independently with multiple assembly tools. Noteworthy, gammaproteobacteria were an abundant fraction in the sequenced samples. Mapping of the raw reads with 99% accuracy to the giant phage genome resulted in an average coverage of 262X. The closest sequenced relatives, albeit still distant, are the Pseudomonas phages PaBG from Lake Baikal and Lu11 isolated from a soil sample from the Philippines. The phage reported here might belong to the same family within the Myoviridae as PaBG and Lu11 and would thus be its first marine member, indicating a more widespread occurrence of this group. We named this phage NCTB (New Caledonia Trichodesmium Bloom) after its origin.
authors.affiliation: Genetics and Experimental Bioinformatics, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Schänzlestr. 1, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Pfreundt
authors.affiliation: Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.
authors.forename: Dina
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Spungin
authors.affiliation: Genetics and Experimental Bioinformatics, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Schänzlestr. 1, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Shengwei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: Computational Biology, Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Allmandring 31, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Voß
authors.affiliation: Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.
authors.forename: Ilana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Berman-Frank
authors.affiliation: Genetics and Experimental Bioinformatics, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Schänzlestr. 1, 79104 Freiburg, Germany. Electronic address: wolfgang.hess@biologie.uni-freiburg.de.
authors.forename: Wolfgang R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Hess
mesh_terms: D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics*; D005068:Eutrophication; D020563:Gammaproteobacteria / Q000821:virology; D016679:Genome, Viral; D056186:Metagenomics; D017900:Myoviridae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D009510:New Caledonia; D000072359:Trichodesmium / Q000821:virology*
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral
keywords: Giant phage; Marine cyanobacteria; Metagenomics; Microbial community; Viral genome