RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Resolving the structure of phage-bacteria interactions in the context of natural diversity
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.06.27.449121
DO 10.1101/2021.06.27.449121
A1 Kathryn M. Kauffman
A1 William K. Chang
A1 Julia M. Brown
A1 Fatima A. Hussain
A1 Joy Y. Yang
A1 Martin F. Polz
A1 Libusha Kelly
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/27/2021.06.27.449121.abstract
AB Microbial communities are shaped by viral predators1. Yet, resolving which viruses (phages) and bacteria are interacting is a major challenge in the context of natural levels of microbial diversity2. Thus, fundamental features of how phage-bacteria interactions are structured and evolve in “the wild” remain poorly resolved3, 4. Here we use large-scale isolation of environmental marine Vibrio bacteria and their phages to obtain quantitative estimates of strain-level phage predator loads, and use all-by-all host range assays to discover how phage and host genomic diversity shape interactions. We show that killing in environmental interaction networks is sparse - with phage predator loads low for most bacterial strains and phages host-strain-specific in their killing. Paradoxically, we also find that although overlap in killing is generally rare between phages, recombination is common. Together, these results indicate that the number of hosts that phages infect is often larger than the number that they kill and suggest that recombination during cryptic co-infections is an important mode of phage evolution in microbial communities. In the development of phages for bioengineering and therapeutics it will be important to consider that nucleic acids of introduced phages may spread into local phage populations through recombination, and that the likelihood of transfer is not predictable based on killing host range.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.