A distinct lineage of Caudovirales that encodes a deeply branching multi-subunit RNA polymerase

Alaina R. Weinheimer and Frank O. Aylward ()
Additional contact information
Alaina R. Weinheimer: Virginia Tech
Frank O. Aylward: Virginia Tech

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Bacteriophages play critical roles in the biosphere, but their vast genomic diversity has obscured their evolutionary origins, and phylogenetic analyses have traditionally been hindered by their lack of universal phylogenetic marker genes. In this study we mine metagenomic data and identify a clade of Caudovirales that encodes the β and β′ subunits of multi-subunit RNA polymerase (RNAP), a high-resolution phylogenetic marker which enables detailed evolutionary analyses. Our RNAP phylogeny revealed that the Caudovirales RNAP forms a clade distinct from cellular homologs, suggesting an ancient acquisition of this enzyme. Within these multimeric RNAP-encoding Caudovirales (mReC), we find that the similarity of major capsid proteins and terminase large subunits further suggests they form a distinct clade with common evolutionary origin. Our study characterizes a clade of RNAP-encoding Caudovirales and suggests the ancient origin of this enzyme in this group, underscoring the important role of viruses in the early evolution of life on Earth.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18281-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18281-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18281-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().