Background: Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the planet and drive biogeochemical cycling on a global scale. Our understanding of biogeography of soil viruses and their ecological functions lags significantly behind that of Bacteria and Fungi. Here, a viromic approach was used to investigate the distribution and ecological functions of viruses from 19 soils across China.
Results: Soil viral community were clustered more significantly by geographical location than type of soil (agricultural and natural). Three clusters of viral communities were identified from North, Southeast and Southwest regions; these clusters differentiated using taxonomic composition and were mainly driven by geographic location and climate factors. A total of 972 viral populations (vOTUs) were detected spanning 23 viral families from the 19 viromes. Phylogenetic analyses of the phoH gene showed a remarkable diversity and the distribution of viral phoH genes was more dependent on the environment. Notably, five proteins involved in phosphorus (P) metabolism-related nucleotide synthesis functions, including dUTPase, MazG, PhoH, Thymidylate synthase complementing protein (Thy1), and Ribonucleoside reductase (RNR), were mainly identified in agricultural soils.
Conclusions: The present work revealed that soil viral communities were distributed across China according to geographical location and climate factors. In addition, P metabolism genes encoded by these viruses probably drive the synthesis of nucleotides for their own genomes inside bacterial hosts, thereby affecting P cycling in the soil ecosystems.
Keywords: Geographic location; Nucleotide synthesis; P metabolism; PhoH; Virome; Virus.
© 2022. The Author(s).