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Honey-bee-associated prokaryotic viral communities reveal wide viral diversity and a profound metabolic coding potential.
- Source :
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A] 2020 May 12; Vol. 117 (19), pp. 10511-10519. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Apr 27. - Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- Honey bees ( Apis mellifera ) produce an enormous economic value through their pollination activities and play a central role in the biodiversity of entire ecosystems. Recent efforts have revealed the substantial influence that the gut microbiota exert on bee development, food digestion, and homeostasis in general. In this study, deep sequencing was used to characterize prokaryotic viral communities associated with honey bees, which was a blind spot in research up until now. The vast majority of the prokaryotic viral populations are novel at the genus level, and most of the encoded proteins comprise unknown functions. Nevertheless, genomes of bacteriophages were predicted to infect nearly every major bee-gut bacterium, and functional annotation and auxiliary metabolic gene discovery imply the potential to influence microbial metabolism. Furthermore, undiscovered genes involved in the synthesis of secondary metabolic biosynthetic gene clusters reflect a wealth of previously untapped enzymatic resources hidden in the bee bacteriophage community.<br />Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.<br /> (Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)
- Subjects :
- Animals
Bacteria genetics
Bacteriophages metabolism
Bees genetics
Biodiversity
Ecosystem
Gastrointestinal Microbiome genetics
High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing methods
Metagenomics methods
Phylogeny
Pollination genetics
Symbiosis genetics
Bacteriophages genetics
Bees metabolism
Bees virology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1091-6490
- Volume :
- 117
- Issue :
- 19
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 32341166
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921859117