Cyanophages infecting the oceanic cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus

Matthew B. Sullivan, John B. Waterbury and Sallie W. Chisholm ()
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Matthew B. Sullivan: MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Biological Oceanography
John B. Waterbury: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Sallie W. Chisholm: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6952, 1047-1051

Abstract: Abstract Prochlorococcus is the numerically dominant phototroph in the tropical and subtropical oceans, accounting for half of the photosynthetic biomass in some areas1,2. Here we report the isolation of cyanophages that infect Prochlorococcus, and show that although some are host-strain-specific, others cross-infect with closely related marine Synechococcus as well as between high-light- and low-light-adapted Prochlorococcus isolates, suggesting a mechanism for horizontal gene transfer. High-light-adapted Prochlorococcus hosts yielded Podoviridae exclusively, which were extremely host-specific, whereas low-light-adapted Prochlorococcus and all strains of Synechococcus yielded primarily Myoviridae, which has a broad host range. Finally, both Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus strain-specific cyanophage titres were low ( 105 cells ml-1). These low titres in areas of high total host cell abundance seem to be a feature of open ocean ecosystems. We hypothesize that gradients in cyanobacterial population diversity, growth rates, and/or the incidence of lysogeny underlie these trends.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1038/nature01929

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