Genomic Analysis of Uncultured Marine Viral Communities

Viruses are the most common biological entities in the oceans by an order of magnitude. Diversity of these viruses undoubtedly plays an important role in controlling bacterial populations and biogeochemical cycles in the marine environment. However, very little is known about the diversity of marine viral communities. Here we report the first genomic analysis of uncultured viral communities from two nearshore marine water samples and one marine sediment sample. In all three marine libraries, over 65% of the sequences were not significantly similar to previously reported sequences, suggesting that much of the diversity is novel. The most common significant hits amongst the known sequences were to viruses. The viral hits included sequences from all the major families of dsDNA tailed phage, as well as some algal viruses. BLAST analysis of the sequence data suggested fundamental differences between the viral communities. Several independent mathematical models based on the observed number of contigs predicted that the most abundant viral genome comprised 2-3% of the total population in the water communities, which were estimated to contain between 374 and 7114 viral types. Diversity of the sediment community was significantly higher. The results also showed that it would be possible to sequence the entire genome of an uncultured marine viral community.