ArticleFEMS microbiology letters2026
Phylogenetic support of pebS as a phage-exclusive auxiliary metabolic gene.
Article in FEMS microbiology letters, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Evolutionary insights into bilin biosynthesis: Functional characterization of pre-PcyA enzymes.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Marine picocyanobacteria, including the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, are major contributors to oceanic photosynthesis and global primary production. Their populations are influenced by T4-like cyanophages, which frequently encode auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) capable of altering host metabolism during infection. One such AMG, pebS, encodes a ferredoxin-dependent bilin reductase (FDBR) phycoerythrobilin (PEB) synthase, which converts biliverdin IXα to PEB. In contrast, cyanobacteria perform a two-step reaction using the FDBR enzymes PebA (15,16-dihydrobiliverdin: ferredoxin oxidoreductase) and PebB (PEB:ferredoxin oxidoreductase), whereas pebS has not been reported in cyanobacterial genomes. Here, we re-evaluated whether pebS is truly restricted to cyanophages by searching the Ocean Gene Atlas (OGA) and all available cyanobacterial genomes at National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) using a cyanophage-derived PebS sequence as query. Using protein phylogenies, we found that most search hits group with PebA or PebB, while few sequences from cyanobacterial genome assemblies were confirmed to belong to PebS based on phylogenetic placement. However, genomic context analysis of these pebS sequences revealed their phage origin, consistent with cyanophage infection at the time of sampling. In conclusion, our results support that pebS is absent in cyanobacterial genomes, raising questions about the evolutionary and biochemical causes for the two-step reduction of biliverdin IXα to PEB in these organisms.
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.