Name: Martha Clokie

Email: mrjc1@le.ac.uk

Author: Martha Clokie, Yi Chan and Joe Morley

Author affiliation: University of Leicester

Abstract title: Marine cyanaobacterial viruses from new host-phage systems to short-timescale resolution of virus dynamics

Absstract:

Several bacteriophages which infect the two dominant genera of cyanobacteria in the oceans (Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus) have been well characterised. Far less is known about the viruses which infect other marine cyanobacteria, in particular those which have a sedentary lifestyle. I will discuss the isolation, characterisation, sequencing and annotation of the first two viruses to have been isolated which infect the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina. Both are siphoviruses and their genomes reveal surprising evolutionary insights. I will also present data from a recent study of Synechococcus viral abundance over short-timescales. Viral abundance follows an expected pattern apart from at one time point where we appear to have inadvertently witnessed a mass temperate phage induction event.