Marine cyanophages: tinkering with the electron transport chain

Philosof, Alon; Battchikova, Natalia; Aro, Eva-Mari; Béjà, Oded

doi:10.1038/ismej.2011.43

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Published: 21 April 2011

Marine cyanophages: tinkering with the electron transport chain

Alon Philosof¹,
Natalia Battchikova²,
Eva-Mari Aro² &
…
Oded Béjà¹

The ISME Journal volume 5, pages 1568–1570 (2011)Cite this article

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Several studies have demonstrated the acquisition of microbial genes by different marine cyanophages, including core photosystem-I (PSI) and photosystem-II (PSII) genes, as well as many other genes of the electron transport chain (Mann et al., 2003; Lindell et al., 2004; Millard et al., 2004; Sullivan et al., 2005; Sharon et al., 2009; Alperovitch et al., 2011).

Recenly, two novel small subunits of the cyanobacterial NDH-1 complex, NdhP and NdhQ, were identified via biochemical studies in Thermosynechococcus elongatus. Homology searches with the ndhP gene revealed the presence of ndhP genes in different cyanophage PSI gene cassettes (Nowaczyk et al., 2011). These gene cassettes were already known to include another NDH-1 gene, the ndhI gene (Alperovitch et al., 2011). Using blastX searches with the new ndhP gene on the NCBI environmental samples data set (env_nr) and also using the VirMic website, we have detected different viral scaffolds from the GOS data set that include, in addition to the ndhP gene, unique gene combinations related to the electron transport chain. Among them, are scaffolds that include genes coding for plastid terminal plastoquinone oxidase (PTOX), ndhI and different viral PSI genes (data not shown). A model of oxygenic photosynthetic electron transport chain is shown in Figure 1, highlighting in colour those membrane proteins, the homologues of which have been found to be encoded by phage genomes. We have included different known viral-encoded proteins involved in electron transfer processes, such as the cyanophage-encoded plastocyanins and ferredoxins (Lindell et al., 2004; Sullivan et al., 2005) and PTOX (Weigele et al., 2007). Interestingly, and related to the electron transport chain issue, we have identified via the VirMic project a GOS cyanophage clone (JCVI_SCAF_1096628171668) that includes three genes encoding for subunits a, b and c from the F_o membrane part of the F_oF₁ ATPase complex. It should be noted, as a word of caution that all of our predictions are based on metagenomic analyses and homology searches and are therefore prone to errors such as wrong annotations, different functions within the same cluster and so on.

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Faculty of Biology, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
Alon Philosof & Oded Béjà
Department of Biochemistry and Food Chemistry, Molecular Plant Biology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Natalia Battchikova & Eva-Mari Aro

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Alon Philosof
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Natalia Battchikova
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Eva-Mari Aro
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Oded Béjà
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Correspondence to Oded Béjà.

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Philosof, A., Battchikova, N., Aro, EM. et al. Marine cyanophages: tinkering with the electron transport chain. ISME J 5, 1568–1570 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.43

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Published: 21 April 2011
Issue date: October 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2011.43

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Marine cyanophages: tinkering with the electron transport chain

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Protist impacts on marine cyanovirocell metabolism

Isolation and complete genome sequence of a novel cyanophage, S-B05, infecting an estuarine Synechococcus strain: insights into environmental adaptation

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