Phys.org February 13, 2024
Majority of the Bacteriophages are uncharacterized, and their hosts are unknown. A team of researchers in the US (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oregon Health & Science University, Iowa State University) applied high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi–C) to directly capture phage-host relationships. Some hosts had high centralities in bacterial community co-occurrence networks, suggesting phage infections have an important impact on the soil bacterial community interactions. They observed increased average viral copies per host (VPH) and decreased viral transcriptional activity following a two-week soil-drying incubation, indicating an increase in lysogenic infections. Soil drying also altered the observed phage host range. A significant negative correlation between VPH and host abundance prior to drying indicates more lytic infections result in more host death and inversely influence host abundance. According to the researchers their study provides empirical evidence of phage-mediated bacterial population dynamics in soil by directly capturing specific phage-host interactions… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Schematic of the experimental design and data analysis workflow… Credit: Nature Communications volume 14, Article number: 7666 (2023)Â