Viral tag and grow: a scalable approach to capture and characterize infectious virus-host pairs.

ABSTRACT: Viral metagenomics (viromics) has reshaped our understanding of DNA viral diversity, ecology, and evolution across Earth's ecosystems. However, viromics now needs approaches to link newly discovered viruses to their host cells and characterize them at scale. This study adapts one such method, sequencing-enabled viral tagging (VT), to establish "Viral Tag and Grow" (VT + Grow) to rapidly capture and characterize viruses that infect a cultivated target bacterium, Pseudoalteromonas. First, baseline cytometric and microscopy data improved understanding of how infection conditions and host physiology impact populations in VT flow cytograms. Next, we extensively evaluated "and grow" capability to assess where VT signals reflect adsorption alone or wholly successful infections that lead to lysis.

SUBMITTER: Jang HB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9723727 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature