‘Ménage à trois’: a selfish genetic element uses a virus to propagate within Thermotogales |
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| Authors: | Julien Lossouarn Camilla L. Nesbø Coraline Mercier Olga Zhaxybayeva Milo S. Johnson Rhianna Charchuck Julien Farasin Nadège Bienvenu Anne‐Claire Baudoux Grégoire Michoud Mohamed Jebbar Claire Geslin |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO, UEB), Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer (IUEM) – UMR 6197, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements Extrêmes (LMEE), rue Dumont d'Urville, Plouzané, France;2. CNRS, IUEM – UMR 6197, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements Extrêmes (LMEE), rue Dumont d'Urville, Plouzané, France;3. Ifremer, UMR 6197, Laboratoire de Microbiologie des Environnements Extrêmes (LMEE), Technop?le Pointe du diablea, Plouzané, France;4. CEES, Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;5. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada;6. Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA;7. Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris, France;8. UMR 7144, Equipe DIPO, Station Biologique de Roscoff, Roscoff, France;9. CNRS, UMR 7144, Adaptation et Diversité en Milieu Marin, Station Biologique de Roscoff, Roscoff, France |
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| Abstract: | Prokaryotic viruses play a major role in the microbial ecology and evolution. However, the virosphere associated with deep‐sea hydrothermal ecosystems remains largely unexplored. Numerous instances of lateral gene transfer have contributed to the complex and incongruent evolutionary history of Thermotogales, an order well represented in deep‐sea hydrothermal vents. The presence of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) loci has been reported in all Thermotogales genomes, suggesting that these bacteria have been exposed to viral infections that could have mediated gene exchange. In this study, we isolated and characterized the first virus infecting bacteria from the order Thermotogales, Marinitoga piezophila virus 1 (MPV1). The host, Marinitoga piezophila is a thermophilic, anaerobic and piezophilic bacterium isolated from a deep‐sea hydrothermal chimney. MPV1 is a temperate Siphoviridae‐like virus with a 43.7 kb genome. Surprisingly, we found that MPV1 virions carry not only the viral DNA but preferentially package a plasmid of 13.3 kb (pMP1) also carried by M. piezophila. This ‘ménage à trois’ highlights potential relevance of selfish genetic elements in facilitating lateral gene transfer in the deep‐sea biosphere. |
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