Genome of a SAR116 bacteriophage shows the prevalence of this phage type in the oceans

The abundance, genetic diversity, and crucial ecological and evolutionary roles of marine phages have prompted a large number of metagenomic studies. However, obtaining a thorough understanding of marine phages has been hampered by the low number of phage isolates infecting major bacterial groups other than cyanophages and pelagiphages. Therefore, there is an urgent requirement for the isolation of phages that infect abundant marine bacterial groups. In this study, we isolated and characterized HMO-2011, a phage infecting a bacterium of the SAR116 clade, one of the most abundant marine bacterial lineages. HMO-2011, which infects Candidatus Puniceispirillum marinum strain IMCC1322, has an similar to 55-kb dsDNA genome that harbors many genes with novel features rarely found in cultured organisms, including genes encoding a DNA polymerase with a partial DnaJ central domain and an atypical methanesulfonate monooxygenase. Furthermore, homologs of nearly all HMO-2011 genes were predominantly found in marine metagenomes rather than cultured organisms, suggesting the novelty of HMO-2011 and the prevalence of this phage type in the oceans. A significant number of the viral metagenome sequences obtained from the ocean surface were best assigned to the HMO-2011 genome. The number of reads assigned to HMO-2011 accounted for 10.3%-25.3% of the total reads assigned to viruses in seven viromes from the Pacific and Indian Oceans, making the HMO-2011 genome the most or second-most frequently assigned viral genome. Given its ability to infect the abundant SAR116 clade and its widespread distribution, Puniceispirillum phage HMO-2011 could be an important resource for marine virus research.