The isolation and genome sequencing of a novel cyanophage S-H68 from the Bohai Sea, China

Cyanobacteria, also known as bule-green algae, are capable of photosynthesis and have a fixed carbon and nitrogen effect. The virus that specifically infects cyanobacteria is called the cyanophage. Cyanophages play a key role in building microbial communities. However, only a small number of cyanophages have been reported so far. In this study, a novel Synechococcus cyanophage S-H68 was isolated from the Bohai Sea of China. Transmission electron microscope observations showed that S-H68 has an icosahedral head, 66 +/- 1 nm in diameter, and a tail with a length of 107 +/- 1 nm, and should be grouped into the family Siphoviridae. To better understand the genetic diversity of this cyanophage, the complete genome was characterized. It consists of 79,639 -bp -length double-stranded DNA with a GC content of 59.8% and is predicted to have 117 open reading frames (ORFs) with an average length of 655 nucleotides. Using the BLASTN tool in the NCBI database for genome comparison, there was no significant similarity between S-H68 and other known cyanophages. So the present study added a new Siphoviridae cyanophage to the marine phage dataset.