Cultivation of a Lytic Double-Stranded RNA Bacteriophage Infecting Microvirgula aerodenitrificans Reveals a Mutualistic Parasitic Lifestyle.

ABSTRACT: Bacteriophages are considered the most abundant entities on earth. However, there are merely seven sequenced double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) phages, compared to thousands of sequenced double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages. Interestingly, dsRNA viruses are quite common in fungi and usually have a lifestyle of commensalism or mutualism. Thus, the classical protocol of using double-layer agar plates to characterize phage plaques might be significantly biased in the isolation of dsRNA phages beyond strictly lytic lifestyles. Thus, we applied a protocol for isolating fungal viruses to identify RNA phages in bacteria and successfully isolated a novel dsRNA phage, phiNY, from Microvirgula aerodenitrificans. phiNY has a genome consisting of three dsRNA segments, and its genome sequence has no nucleotide

SUBMITTER: Cai X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8354237 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature