SGM Journals
Environmental And Evolutionary Microbiology

Evidence of bacteriophage-mediated horizontal transfer of bacterial 16S rRNA genes in the viral metagenome of the marine sponge Hymeniacidon perlevis

Catriona Harrington, Antonio Del Casale, Jonathan Kennedy, Horst Neve, Bernard E. Picton, Marlies J. Mooij, Fergal O’Gara, Leonid A. Kulakov, Michael J. Larkin, Alan D. W. Dobson

  • 1Marine Biotechnology Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
  • 2Department of Microbiology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
  • 3School of Biological Sciences, The Queen’s University of Belfast, UK
  • 4Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Max Rubner-Institute, Federal Research Institute for Nutrition and Food, Kiel, Germany
  • 5Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Northern Ireland, Ireland
  • 6BIOMERIT Research Centre, Microbiology Department, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
  • Correspondence
    Alan D. W. Dobson a.dobson{at}ucc.ie

    • Microbiology 2012; 158(Pt 11):2789–2795 · https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.057943-0

    View at publisher PubMed

    Abstract

    Marine sponges have never been directly examined with respect to the presence of viruses or their potential involvement in horizontal gene transfer. Here we demonstrate for the first time, to our knowledge, the presence of viruses in the marine sponge Hymeniacidon perlevis. Moreover, bacterial 16S rDNA was detected in DNA isolated from these viruses, indicating that phage-derived transduction appears to occur in H. perlevis. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that bacterial 16S rDNA isolated from sponge-derived viral and total DNA differed significantly, indicating that not all species are equally involved in transduction.

    • The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequences from viral DNA retrieved from seawater and from H. perlevis in June 2010 are JQ435953–JQ435983 and JQ435984–JQ436010, respectively.

    • Two supplementary figures are available with the online version of this paper.

    • Edited by: A. Holmes

    Abbreviations:
    CRISPR
    clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat
    OTU
    operational taxonomic unit
    TEM
    transmission electron microscopy
    TFF
    tangential flow filtration