Cultivation of a Lytic Double-Stranded RNA Bacteriophage Infecting Microvirgula aerodenitrificans Reveals a Mutualistic Parasitic Lifestyle
Xiaoyao Cai, Fengjuan Tian, Teng Li, Hongmei Liu, Yigang Tong, Shuai Le, Tingting Zhang
Abstract
Viruses with dsRNA genomes are quite diverse and infect organisms in all three domains of life. Although dsRNA viruses that infect humans, plants, and fungi are quite common, dsRNA viruses that infect bacteria, known as bacteriophages, are quite understudied, and only seven dsRNA phages have been sequenced so far. One possible explanation for the rare isolation of dsRNA phages might be the protocol of the double-layer agar plate assay. Phages without strictly lytic lifestyles might not form plaques. Thus, we applied the protocol of isolating fungal viruses to identify RNA phages inside bacteria and successfully isolated a novel dsRNA phage, phiNY, with a mutualistic parasitic lifestyle. This study implies that dsRNA phages without strictly lytic lifestyles might be common in nature and deserve more investigations.