Project description:Arctic regions, which are changing rapidly as they warm 2 to 3 times faster than the global average, still retain microbial habitats that serve as natural laboratories for understanding mechanisms of microbial adaptation to extreme conditions. Seawater-derived brines within both sea ice (sea-ice brine) and ancient layers of permafrost (cryopeg brine) support diverse microbes adapted to subzero temperatures and high salinities, yet little is known about viruses in these extreme environments, which, if analogous to other systems, could play important evolutionary and ecosystem roles. Here, we characterized viral communities and their functions in samples of cryopeg brine, sea-ice brine, and melted sea ice. Viral abundance was high in cryopeg brine (1.2 × 108 ml-1) and much lower in sea-ice brine (1.3 × 105 to 2.1 × 105 ml-1), which roughly paralleled the differences in cell concentrations in these samples. Five low-input, quantitative viral metagenomes were sequenced to yield 476 viral populations (i.e., species level; ≥10 kb), only 12% of which could be assigned taxonomy by traditional database approaches, indicating a high degree of novelty. Additional analyses revealed that these viruses: (i) formed communities that differed between sample type and vertically with sea-ice depth; (ii) infected hosts that dominated these extreme ecosystems, including Marinobacter, Glaciecola, and Colwellia; and (iii) encoded fatty acid desaturase (FAD) genes that likely helped their hosts overcome cold and salt stress during infection, as well as mediated horizontal gene transfer of FAD genes between microbes. Together, these findings contribute to understanding viral abundances and communities and how viruses impact their microbial hosts in subzero brines and sea ice.IMPORTANCE This study explores viral community structure and function in remote and extreme Arctic environments, including subzero brines within marine layers of permafrost and sea ice, using a modern viral ecogenomics toolkit for the first time. In addition to providing foundational data sets for these climate-threatened habitats, we found evidence that the viruses had habitat specificity, infected dominant microbial hosts, encoded host-derived metabolic genes, and mediated horizontal gene transfer among hosts. These results advance our understanding of the virosphere and how viruses influence extreme ecosystems. More broadly, the evidence that virally mediated gene transfers may be limited by host range in these extreme habitats contributes to a mechanistic understanding of genetic exchange among microbes under stressful conditions in other systems.

Project description:We performed RNA-sequencing experiments to examine gene expression in the genome of the cold-adapted (psychrophilic) marine diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus to six different treatments simulating conditions found within sea ice. RNA-seq was performed on replicate samples for each experimental condition. Phytoplankton cells were grown under six different experimental conditions including (I) 0℃ and salinity 34 (seawater before ice formation), (II) two days at -4℃ and salinity 34 (early freezing or frazil ice formation), (III) eight days at -4℃ and salinity 34 (late freezing, frazil ice layer formation), (IV) two days at -4℃ and salinity 52 (initialization of brine channel formation in ice), (V) eight days at -4℃ and salinity 52 (established brine channel formation and young consolidated columnar ice), and (VI) two days at -8℃ and salinity 52 (further temperature stress). Total RNA was extracted using a guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction protocol, followed by DNase I treatment and RNA purification (Quiagen). First strand cDNA synthesis was performed using random hexamers. Library preparation was performed using the RNA-seq Sample Prep Kit (Illumina) and sequencing was conducted according to the TruSeq RNA sequencing protocol (Illumina). Illumina TruSeq RNA library production process: The libraries for this project were constructed with the PerkinElmer Sciclone using the TruSeq RNA protocol (Illumina 15026495 Rev.B). The library preparation involved an initial QC of the RNA using Qubit DNA (Life technologies Q32854) and RNA (Life technologies Q32852) assays as well as a quality check using the Bioanalyzer with the Nano kit (Agilent 5067-1511). 1ug of this RNA was purified to extract mRNA with a poly- A pull down using biotin beads and fragmented, first strand cDNA was synthesised followed by the second strand. The ends of the samples were repaired using the 3' to 5' exonuclease activity to remove the 3' overhangs and the polymerase activity to fill in the 5' overhangs creating blunt ends. A single ‘A’ nucleotide was added to the 3’ ends of the blunt fragments to prevent them from ligating to one another during the adapter ligation reaction. A corresponding single ‘T’ nucleotide on the 3’ end of the adapter provided a complementary overhang for ligating the adapter to the fragment. This strategy ensured a low rate of chimera formation. The ligation of a number indexing adapters to the ends of the DNA fragments prepared them for hybridisation onto a flow cell. The ligated products were subjected to a bead based size selection using Beckman Coulter XP beads (Beckman Coulter A63880). This removed the majority of un-ligated adapters, as well as any adapters that may have ligated to one another. Prior to hybridisation to the flow cell the samples were PCR’d to selectively enrich those DNA fragments that have adapter molecules on both ends and to amplify the amount of DNA in the library. The PCR was performed with a PCR primer cocktail that annealed to the ends of the adapter. The insert size of the libraries was verified by running an aliquot of the DNA library on a PerkinElmer GX using the High Sensitivity DNA chip (PerkinElmer CLS760672) and the concentration was determined by using a High Sensitivity Qubit assay and q-PCR. Illumina HiSeq 2000 clustering and sequencing: The 24 libraries were normalised and equimolar pooled to 10 nM using elution buffer (Qiagen). Each library pool was then diluted to 2 nM with NaOH and 5μL transferred into 995μL HT1 (Illumina) to give a final concentration of 10pM. 120 μL of each diluted library pool was then transferred into a 200 μL strip tube, spiked with 1% PhiX Control v3 and placed on ice before loading onto the Illumina cBot. The flow cell was clustered using TruSeq Paired End Cluster Generation Kit v3, following the Illumina PE_amplification_Linearization_Blocking_PrimerHyb recipe. Following the clustering procedure, the flow cell was loaded onto the Illumina HiSeq2000 instrument following the manufacturer’s instructions. The sequencing chemistry used was TruSeq SBS Kit v3-HS using HiSeq Control Software 1.4.8 and RTA 1.12.4.2. Each library pool was run in a single lane (lane 5 and 6) for 50cycles of each paired end read. Reads in bcl format were demultiplexed based on the 6 bp Illumina index by CASSAVA, allowing for a one base-pair mismatch per library, and converted to FASTQ format by bcl2fastq.

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Arctic cryopeg brine, sea-ice brine, and seawater

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