Life of Giant Phages (GIAPHAGE)
Main funder
Funder's project number: 101117204
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 1 499 808,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/11/2023
Project end date: 31/10/2028
Summary
Bacterial viruses, phages, are ubiquitous and most numerous entities in the biosphere. Development of sequencing techniques has increased our understanding on the diversity of phages that have not been isolated due to lack of cultivable hosts and/or suitable isolation methods. While sequence data enables a better view to the viral diversity, at the same time lack of functional data and biological conbnection increases. Recently, different studies have found megaphages (mainly phages with a genome over 600 kbp) by assembling metagenomes from various environmental samples. However, no such isolates have been obtained thus far meaning that their characteristics and host interactions are unknown. In this ERC project I will enlighten the life of giant phages, the term in which I use for both jumbo and megaphages. I will achieve this by using the first megaphage isolates in my collection. During the project, evidence on megaphage structure, host interactions, symbiotic relationship with host bacterium and megaphage derived competition mechanisms will be provided. I will also determine the environmental preferences for the megaphage emergence and abundance in boreal freshwaters. Using a unique set of different phage sizes infecting the same host I will determine the size correlation to different life history traits. The project will find reasons to why, how, where and when are megaphages isolated. It will give insight to the mutualistic relationship between bacteria and their viruses. It has also great potential to reveal new mechanisms behind phage competition. Consequently, it will aid in understanding the role of megaphages in human and animal gut microbiome and potentially provide avenues for developing new genetic tools. This research will have ground-breaking impact by expanding our understanding of the microbial ecology and especially phage ecology and the project will create a new field of study under phage biology.
