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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Prokaryotic And Viral Community Composition Of Freshwater Springs In Florida, Usa, Kema Malki, Natalie A. Sawaya, Anna J. Székely, Michael J. Tisza, Mya Breitbart
Prokaryotic And Viral Community Composition Of Freshwater Springs In Florida, Usa, Kema Malki, Natalie A. Sawaya, Anna J. Székely, Michael J. Tisza, Mya Breitbart
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Aquifers, which are essential underground freshwater reservoirs worldwide, are understudied ecosystems that harbor diverse forms of microbial life. This study investigated the abundance and composition of prokaryotic and viral communities in the outflow of five springs across northern Florida, USA, as a proxy of microbial communities found in one of the most productive aquifers in the world, the Floridan aquifer. The average abundances of virus-like particles and prokaryotic cells were slightly lower than those reported from other groundwater systems, ranging from 9.6 × 103 ml−1 to 1.1 × 105 ml−1 and 2.2 × 103 ml …
Prevalence Of A Vertically Transmitted Single-Stranded Dna Virus In Spinybacked Orbweavers (Gasteracantha Cancriformis) From Florida, Usa, Karyna Rosario, Kaitlin A. Mettel, Anthony M. Greco, Mya Breitbart
Prevalence Of A Vertically Transmitted Single-Stranded Dna Virus In Spinybacked Orbweavers (Gasteracantha Cancriformis) From Florida, Usa, Karyna Rosario, Kaitlin A. Mettel, Anthony M. Greco, Mya Breitbart
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Spiders (order Araneae, class Arachnida) are an important group of predatory arthropods in terrestrial ecosystems that have been recently identified as an untapped reservoir of single-stranded (ss)DNA viruses. Specifically, spiders harbour a diversity of ssDNA viruses encoding a replication-associated protein (Rep) within a circular genome. However, little is known about the ecology of novel circular Rep-encoding ssDNA (CRESS DNA) viruses. Here we investigated two CRESS DNA viruses recently identified in spinybacked orbweavers (Gasteracantha cancriformis), namely spinybacked orbweaver circular virus (SpOrbCV) 1 and 2. SpOrbCV-1 was detected in the majority (> 65 %) of spider specimens from all life …
Virus Discovery In All Three Major Lineages Of Terrestrial Arthropods Highlights The Diversity Of Single-Stranded Dna Viruses Associated With Invertebrates, Karyna Rosario, Kaitlin Mettel, Bayleigh Benner, Ryan Johnson, Catherine Scott, Sohath Yusseff-Vanegas, Christopher Baker, Deby Cassill, Caroline Storer, Arvind Varsani, Mya Breitbart
Virus Discovery In All Three Major Lineages Of Terrestrial Arthropods Highlights The Diversity Of Single-Stranded Dna Viruses Associated With Invertebrates, Karyna Rosario, Kaitlin Mettel, Bayleigh Benner, Ryan Johnson, Catherine Scott, Sohath Yusseff-Vanegas, Christopher Baker, Deby Cassill, Caroline Storer, Arvind Varsani, Mya Breitbart
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Viruses encoding a replication-associated protein (Rep) within a covalently closed, single-stranded (ss)DNA genome are among the smallest viruses known to infect eukaryotic organisms, including economically valuable agricultural crops and livestock. Although circular Rep-encoding ssDNA (CRESS DNA) viruses are a widespread group for which our knowledge is rapidly expanding, biased sampling toward vertebrates and land plants has limited our understanding of their diversity and evolution. Here, we screened terrestrial arthropods for CRESS DNA viruses and report the identification of 44 viral genomes and replicons associated with specimens representing all three major terrestrial arthropod lineages, namely Euchelicerata (spiders), Hexapoda (insects), and Myriapoda …
The Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis: Iron-Virus Interactions In The Ocean, Chelsea Bonnain, Mya Breitbart, Kristen N. Buck
The Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis: Iron-Virus Interactions In The Ocean, Chelsea Bonnain, Mya Breitbart, Kristen N. Buck
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Iron is an essential nutrient and the sub-nanomolar concentrations of iron in open ocean surface waters are often insufficient to support optimal biological activity. More than 99.9% of dissolved iron in these waters is bound to organic ligands, yet determining the identity of these ligands in seawater remains a major challenge. Among the potential dissolved organic ligands in the colloidal fraction captured between a 0.02 and a 0.2 μm filter persists an extremely abundant biological candidate: viruses, most of which are phages (viruses that infect bacteria). Recent work in non-marine model systems has revealed the presence of iron ions within …
Multidimensional Metrics For Estimating Phage Abundance, Distribution, Gene Density, And Sequence Coverage In Metagenomes, Ramy Aziz, Bhakti Dwivedi, Sajia Akhter, Mya Breitbart, Robert Edwards
Multidimensional Metrics For Estimating Phage Abundance, Distribution, Gene Density, And Sequence Coverage In Metagenomes, Ramy Aziz, Bhakti Dwivedi, Sajia Akhter, Mya Breitbart, Robert Edwards
Marine Science Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Water Column Stratification Structures Viral Community Composition In The Sargasso Sea, Dawn Goldsmith, Jennifer Brum, Max Hopkins, Craig Carlson, Mya Breitbart
Water Column Stratification Structures Viral Community Composition In The Sargasso Sea, Dawn Goldsmith, Jennifer Brum, Max Hopkins, Craig Carlson, Mya Breitbart
Marine Science Faculty Publications
A decade-long study of viral abundance at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site recently revealed an annually recurring pattern where viral abundance was fairly uniform in the well-mixed upper water column each winter, yet a subsurface peak in viral abundance between 60 and 100 m depth developed each summer during water column stratification (Parsons et al. 2012; ISME J 6:273–284). Building upon these findings, this study tests the hypothesis that in the well-mixed period (March), the viral communities at the surface and at 100 m depth are similar in composition, while during water column stratification (September), differences in the …
Diversity Of Environmental Single-Stranded Dna Phages Revealed By Pcr Amplification Of The Partial Major Capsid Protein, Max S. Hopkins, Shweta Kailasan, Allison Cohen, Simon Roux, Amelia E. Shevenell, Mavis Agbandje-Mckenna, Mya Breitbart
Diversity Of Environmental Single-Stranded Dna Phages Revealed By Pcr Amplification Of The Partial Major Capsid Protein, Max S. Hopkins, Shweta Kailasan, Allison Cohen, Simon Roux, Amelia E. Shevenell, Mavis Agbandje-Mckenna, Mya Breitbart
Marine Science Faculty Publications
The small single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) bacteriophages of the subfamily Gokushovirinae were traditionally perceived as narrowly targeted, niche-specific viruses infecting obligate parasitic bacteria, such as Chlamydia. The advent of metagenomics revealed gokushoviruses to be widespread in global environmental samples. This study expands knowledge of gokushovirus diversity in the environment by developing a degenerate PCR assay to amplify a portion of the major capsid protein (MCP) gene of gokushoviruses. Over 500 amplicons were sequenced from 10 environmental samples (sediments, sewage, seawater and freshwater), revealing the ubiquity and high diversity of this understudied phage group. Residue-level conservation data generated from multiple alignments …
Densovirus Associated With Sea-Star Wasting Disease And Mass Mortality, Ian Hewson, Jason Button, Brent Gudenkauf, Benjamin Miner, Alisa Newton, Mya Breitbart, Elizabeth Fahsbender, Kevin Lafferty
Densovirus Associated With Sea-Star Wasting Disease And Mass Mortality, Ian Hewson, Jason Button, Brent Gudenkauf, Benjamin Miner, Alisa Newton, Mya Breitbart, Elizabeth Fahsbender, Kevin Lafferty
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Sea stars inhabiting the Northeast Pacific Coast have recently experienced an extensive outbreak of wasting disease, leading to their degradation and disappearance from many coastal areas. In this paper, we present evidence that the cause of the disease is transmissible from disease-affected animals to apparently healthy individuals, that the disease-causing agent is a virus-sized microorganism, and that the best candidate viral taxon, the sea star-associated densovirus (SSaDV), is in greater abundance in diseased than in healthy sea stars.
Occurrence Of Lysogenic Bacteria In Marine Microbial Communities As Determined By Prophage Induction, Sunny C. Jiang, John H Paul
Occurrence Of Lysogenic Bacteria In Marine Microbial Communities As Determined By Prophage Induction, Sunny C. Jiang, John H Paul
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Viruses are abundant and dynamic members of the marine microbial community, and it is important to understand their role in the ecology of natural microbial populations. We have previously found lysogenic bacteria to be a significant proportion (43%) of the cultivable heterotrophic microbial population. As the majority of marine bacteria are not cultivable using standard plating methods, we measured the proportion of marine lysogenic bacteria in natural communities by prophage induction. Mitomycin C, UV radiation, sunlight, temperature and pressure were used to induce prophage in lysogenic bacteria from estuarine, coastal and oligotrophic offshore environments. To determine if hydrocarbon pollutants may …