ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2004
Transfer of photosynthesis genes to and from Prochlorococcus viruses.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 233 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
233 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Viral genetic diversity and functional potential in polar and subarctic sea ice.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- V- and VNature communications · 2026Article
- Photosynthesis Has Been Established Only Once-Evolution of Photosynthetic Reaction Center Proteins and Bacteriochlorophyll Biosynthesis.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Article
- Effects of marine heatwaves on the dynamics of marine coastal microbial communities.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Ribonucleotide reductases recapitulate biogeographic patterns within virioplankton according to ocean biogeochemistry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Article
- Limited consensus of marine viral diversity observed across techniques.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Viral Dark Matter: Illuminating Protein Function, Ecology, and Biotechnological Promises.Biochemistry · 2025Review
- Discarded diversity: novel megaphages, auxiliary metabolic genes, and virally encoded CRISPR-Cas systems in landfills.Virology journal · 2025Article
- Genetic exchange shapes ultra-small Patescibacteria metabolic capacities in the terrestrial subsurface.mSystems · 2025Article
- Virocell resource manipulation under nutrient limitation.mSystems · 2025Article
- Vertical transport and spatiotemporal dynamics of giant viruses in the North Pacific subtropical gyre.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Unravelling viral ecology and evolution over 20 years in a freshwater lake.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Long-read powered viral metagenomics in the oligotrophic Sargasso Sea.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Episymbiotic Saccharibacteria TM7x modulates the susceptibility of its host bacteria to phage infection and promotes their coexistence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Ecological roles of nano-picoplankton in stratified waters of an embayment in the southern Benguela.FEMS microbiology letters · 2024Article
173 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Comparative genomics gives us a new window into phage-host interactions and their evolutionary implications. Here we report the presence of genes central to oxygenic photosynthesis in the genomes of three phages from two viral families (Myoviridae and Podoviridae) that infect the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus. The genes that encode the photosystem II core reaction center protein D1 (psbA), and a high-light-inducible protein (HLIP) (hli) are present in all three genomes. Both myoviruses contain additional hli gene types, and one of them encodes the second photosystem II core reaction center protein D2 (psbD), whereas the other encodes the photosynthetic electron transport proteins plastocyanin (petE) and ferredoxin (petF). These uninterrupted, full-length genes are conserved in their amino acid sequence, suggesting that they encode functional proteins that may help maintain photosynthetic activity during infection. Phylogenetic analyses show that phage D1, D2, and HLIP proteins cluster with those from Prochlorococcus, indicating that they are of cyanobacterial origin. Their distribution among several Prochlorococcus clades further suggests that the genes encoding these proteins were transferred from host to phage multiple times. Phage HLIPs cluster with multicopy types found exclusively in Prochlorocococus, suggesting that phage may be mediating the expansion of the hli gene family by transferring these genes back to their hosts after a period of evolution in the phage. These gene transfers are likely to play a role in the fitness landscape of hosts and phages in the surface oceans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.