Viral clones from the GOS expedition with an unusual photosystem-I gene cassette organization |
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Authors: | Oded Béjà Svetlana Fridman Fabian Glaser |
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Affiliation: | 1.Faculty of Biology, Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel;2.Bioinformatics Knowledge Unit, Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel |
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Abstract: | Cyanobacteria have a key role in marine photosynthesis, which contributes to the global carbon cycle and to the world oxygen supply. Genes encoding for photosystem-II (PSII) and photosystem-I (PSI) reaction centers are found in different cyanophage genomes, and it was suggested that the horizontal transfer of these genes might be involved in increasing phage fitness. We have further analyzed a rare viral Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) clone containing PSI genes. This clone contains the unusual PSI gene organization psaD->C->A, as opposed to the more frequently observed viral psaJF->C->A->B->K->E->D organization, and was detected only once in the GOS metagenome. Our analyses identified more occurrences with similar arrangement and indicate that this PSI viral gene organization (now psaD->C->A->B), although rare, is authentic and represents a new PSI gene arrangement. |
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Keywords: | photosystem I phage cyanobacteria Synechococcus Prochlorococcus |
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