SOILS, SEC 1 • SOIL ORGANIC MATTER DYNAMICS AND NUTRIENT CYCLING • RESEARCH
ARTICLE
Viral metagenomics analysis and eight novel viral genomes identified
from the Dushanzi mud volcanic soil in Xinjiang, China
Dan-Ting Yu
1,2
&
Ji-Zheng He
1,2,3
&
Li-Mei Zhang
1,2
&
Li-Li Han
1,2
Received: 11 April 2018 / Accepted: 23 May 2018
#
Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
Purpose Viruses are the most abundant biological entities and play significant biological roles in marine system. However, little
is known about their biodiversity in mud volcanic soil, which is salty and covered with emitting sludge. In this study, we report
metagenomic analysis results of viral community composition and function from the Dushanzi mud volcanic soil (named NHS)
in Xinjiang, China, and provide a comparative analysis with other environmental types.
Materials and methods We utilized metagenomes to obtain the virus data and carried out viral automatic phylogenetic and
functional analyses by the metagenomics analysis server. After assembling by metaSPAdes, scaffolds were rapidly identified and
annotated with the PHAge Search Tool in order to identify new phage genomes.
Results and discussion For the ssDNA viral group, Microviridae were the most abundant viral family, which were above 95%.
Other plant viruses (Geminiviridae, Nanoviridae) and animal viruses (Circoviridae, Parvoviridae) were also detected. The
majority of viral significant hits belonged to Siphoviridae (80.36%). Phages, which infect bacteria, were widely distributed in
the soil sample. There were eight novel viral genomes identified in the NHS virome. The two longest scaffolds were annotated to
Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage YMC11 and Acinetobacter baumannii phage LZ35, respectively. Other six new viral genomes
were identified as Microviridae. Comparisons of NHS virome with other published viromes revealed that the type of ecosystem
mainly drove the viral community structure.
Conclusions This work provided detailed viral community composition and function information, which supplemented microbial
community research on mud volcanoes. Importantly, we also identified eight complete viral genomes in the NHS virome which
were obviously different from known viruses.
Keywords Mud volcanoes
.
Soil
.
Taxonomic compositions
.
Virome
1 Introduction
Mud volcanoes, defined as piercement structures, are usually
created by the intrusion and seepage of pressurized fluids on
the Earth’s surface or the sea floor through long narrow open-
ings or fissures in the curst (Mazzini et al. 2009), and are
frequently observed in areas of rapid deposition and lateral
tectonic compression (Barber et al. 1986; Moore and Vrolijk
1992; Kopf et al. 1998). Since the first discovery of mud
volcanoes (Cita et al. 1981), the distribution (Milkov 2000,
2005; Chen et al. 2014;Mascleetal.2014), morphology
(Cuylaerts et al. 2012), and structures (Evans et al. 2008)of
these enigmatic clay-kinetic-related structures have been de-
scribed in many papers.
Several studies on mud volcanoes have revealed the distri-
bution characteristics of microbial community (Pachiadaki et
Responsible editor: Huaiying Yao
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-2045-9) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
* Li-Li Han
llhan@rcees.ac.cn
1
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research
Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
2
University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049,
China
3
Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, University of
Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia
Journal of Soils and Sediments
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-2045-9
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
@JoseServera