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Eloe-Fadrosh, E. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Eloe-Fadrosh, E. A..

15 recordsLinked to original sources
bioRxiv2025

Planetary-scale metagenomic search reveals new patterns of CRISPR targeting

Interactions between microbes and their mobile genetic elements (MGEs), including viruses and plasmids, are critical drivers of microbiome structures and processes. CRISPR-Cas systems are important regulators of these host-MGE interactions, but a global understanding of CRISPR loci diversity, activity, and roles across Earths biomes is still lacking. Here, we use an optimized computational approach to search short-read data and collect [~]800 million CRISPR spacers across [~]450,000 public metagenomes. From this extensive CRISPR spacer dataset, we identified 1.18 billion hits between 41 million spacers and 2.5 million viruses and plasmids. Focusing on the role of CRISPR as anti-phage defense, we observed an over-representation of prevalent and conserved spacers consistent with a positive selection pressure associated with phage targeting. Identification of sustained CRISPR targeting by microbes not expected to be viable hosts suggested that some phage genomes may frequently enter non-host microbial cells. Taken together, these results outline the extensive diversity of CRISPR loci across microbiomes, and highlight key parameters driving CRISPR targeting patterns likely to influence strain-level diversification and selection processes within microbial populations.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2025

A genomic catalog of Earth's bacterial and archaeal symbionts

1Microbial symbiosis drives the functional and phylogenomic diversification of life on Earth, yet remains underexplored due to culturing challenges. This study employed machine learning (ML) to predict symbiotic lifestyles in hundreds of thousands of microbial genomes from diverse environmental metagenome samples and reference genomes. Predictions were performed using symclatron, a novel ML framework developed here to identify genomic signatures of symbionts. Predictions were deposited in a novel Symbiont Genomes catalog (SymGs). The results indicated that 15-23% of uncultivated microbes likely engage in symbiotic relationships with other organisms and are present in half of all known bacterial and archaeal phyla. We also identified genomic signatures of symbiotic lifestyles, including the loss of certain metabolic functions and the differential presence of others that may enable host-dependent living. The symclatron software and the SymGs catalog represent valuable resources for studying symbioses, facilitating future mechanistic investigations of host-microbe associations.

genomics↗
bioRxiv2025

Tracking Persistence and Dynamics of Active Soil Viruses with SIP-Viromics

Viruses are abundant and ecologically important in soils, yet the persistence and production dynamics of extracellular virions remain poorly understood. We applied a genome-resolved stable isotope probing viromics (SIP-viromics) approach, combining H 18O labeling with viral metagenomics, to track virion turnover in seasonally dry grassland soils following rewetting. We identified 354 viral populations (vOTUs) using individual-sample and combined metagenome assemblies. Only 22% of vOTUs exhibited significant 18O enrichment, indicating active replication and new virion production during the 1-week incubation; the majority (78%) persisted without detectable replication, consistent with a viral seed bank. Active vOTUs accounted for 4.76-5.15% of total virions per gram of soil, with viral loads ranging from 3.15 x 1010 to 6.59 x 1010 virions per gram. Probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses spanning viral DNA fraction and genome length reinforced that persistent virions represented the majority of the extracellular viral pool post-wet-up, regardless of parameter assumptions. Host predictions linked both active and persistent vOTUs primarily to Actinomycetota and Pseudomonadota--bacterial groups known to rapidly resuscitate following rewetting--suggesting that some viruses exhibit rapid turnover while others persist over longer timescales, forming a stable viral pool capable of reinitiating infections during favorable conditions. These results demonstrate that SIP-viromics can distinguish newly produced from persistent virions and reveal host-associated patterns of lytic infection and virion production. Our findings advance understanding of soil virus-host interactions and highlight the ecological role of persistent virions as a genetic reservoir contributing to microbial turnover and biogeochemical cycling following environmental disturbance. ImportanceUnderstanding the persistence and production dynamics of soil viruses is critical for elucidating their roles in microbial community dynamics and nutrient cycling, yet these processes have remained largely uncharacterized due to methodological limitations. By integrating stable isotope probing with viromics, this study provides a robust framework for directly distinguishing newly produced from persistent virions in situ. Unlike conventional viromics, which only catalogs viral diversity, SIP-viromics enables quantification of active viral replication and persistence under natural soil conditions. Our results demonstrate that most virions in a seasonally dry soil persisted through a rewetting event, with active replication limited to a minority of viral populations. Persistent virions were primarily linked to dominant bacterial groups, indicating that host ecophysiology and environmental stability strongly influence lytic infection. Collectively, these findings highlight viruses as long-term reservoirs of genetic material, capable of shaping microbial dynamics and ecosystem processes over time. This work establishes SIP-viromics as a powerful approach for studying virus-host interactions and their ecological significance in terrestrial environments.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2025

Tetranucleotide frequencies differentiate genomic boundaries and metabolic strategies across environmental microbiomes

Microbiomes are constrained by physicochemical conditions, nutrient regimes, and community interactions across diverse environments, yet genomic signatures of this adaptation remain unclear. Metagenome sequencing is a powerful technique to analyze genomic content in the context of natural environments, establishing concepts of microbial ecological trends. Here, we developed a data discovery tool - a tetranucleotide-informed metagenome stability diagram - that is publicly available in the Integrated Microbial Genomes and Microbiomes (IMG/M) platform for metagenome-ecosystem analyses. We analyzed the tetranucleotide frequencies from quality-filtered and unassembled sequence data of over 12,000 metagenomes to assess ecosystem-specific microbial community composition and function. We found that tetranucleotide frequencies can differentiate communities across various natural environments, and that specific functional and metabolic trends can be observed in this structuring. Our tool places metagenomes sampled from diverse environments into clusters and along gradients of tetranucleotide frequency similarity, suggesting microbiome community compositions specific to gradient conditions. Within the resulting metagenome clusters, we identify protein-coding gene identifiers that are most differentiated between ecosystem classifications. We plan for annual updates to the metagenome stability diagram in IMG/M with new data, allowing for refinement of the ecosystem classifications delineated here. This framework has the potential to inform future studies on microbiome engineering, bioremediation, and the prediction of microbial community responses to environmental change. ImportanceMicrobes adapt to diverse environments influenced by factors like temperature, acidity, and nutrient availability. We developed a new tool to analyze and visualize the genetic makeup of over 12,000 microbial communities, revealing patterns linked to specific functions and metabolic processes. This tool groups similar microbial communities and identifies characteristic genes within environments. By continually updating this tool, we aim to advance our understanding of microbial ecology, enabling applications like microbial engineering, bioremediation, and predicting responses to environmental change.

ecology↗
bioRxiv2023

A functional microbiome catalog crowdsourced from North American rivers

Predicting elemental cycles and maintaining water quality under increasing anthropogenic influence requires understanding the spatial drivers of river microbiomes. However, the unifying microbial processes governing river biogeochemistry are hindered by a lack of genome-resolved functional insights and sampling across multiple rivers. Here we employed a community science effort to accelerate the sampling, sequencing, and genome-resolved analyses of river microbiomes to create the Genome Resolved Open Watersheds database (GROWdb). This resource profiled the identity, distribution, function, and expression of thousands of microbial genomes across rivers covering 90% of United States watersheds. Specifically, GROWdb encompasses 1,469 microbial species from 27 phyla, including novel lineages from 10 families and 128 genera, and defines the core river microbiome for the first time at genome level. GROWdb analyses coupled to extensive geospatial information revealed local and regional drivers of microbial community structuring, while also presenting a myriad of foundational hypotheses about ecosystem function. Building upon the previously conceived River Continuum Concept1, we layer on microbial functional trait expression, which suggests the structure and function of river microbiomes is predictable. We make GROWdb available through various collaborative cyberinfrastructures2, 3 so that it can be widely accessed across disciplines for watershed predictive modeling and microbiome-based management practices.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2023

Population ecology and potential biogeochemical impacts of ssDNA and dsDNA soil viruses along a permafrost thaw gradient

Climate change is disproportionately warming northern peatlands, which may release large carbon stores via increased microbial activity. While there are many unknowns about such microbial responses, virus roles are especially poorly characterized with studies to date largely restricted to "bycatch" from bulk metagenomes. Here, we used optimized viral particle purification techniques on 20 samples along a highly contextualized peatland permafrost thaw gradient, extracted and sequenced viral particle DNA using two library kits to capture single-stranded (ssDNA) and double-stranded (dsDNA) virus genomes (40 total viromes), and explored their diversity and potential ecosystem impacts. Both kits recovered similar dsDNA virus numbers, but only one also captured thousands of ssDNA viruses. Combining these data, we explored population-level ecology using genomic representation from 9,560 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs); nearly a 4-fold expansion from permafrost-associated soils, and 97% of which were novel when compared against large datasets from soils, oceans, and the human gut. In silico predictions identified putative hosts for 44% (4,149 dsDNA + 17 ssDNA) of the identified vOTUs spanning 2 eukaryotic, 12 archaeal, and 30 bacterial phyla. The recovered vOTUs encoded 1,684 putative auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) and other metabolic genes carried by [~]10% of detected vOTUs, of which 46% were related to carbon processing and 644 were novel. These AMGs grouped into five functional categories and 11 subcategories, and nearly half (47%) of the AMGs were involved in carbon utilization. Of these, 112 vOTUs encoded 123 glycoside hydrolases spanning 15 types involved in the degradation of polysaccharides (e.g., cellulose) to monosaccharides (e.g., galactose), or further monosaccharide degradation, which suggests virus involvement in myriad metabolisms including fermentation and central carbon metabolism. These findings expand the scope of viral roles in microbial carbon processing and suggest viruses may be critical for understanding the fate of soil organic carbon in peatlands.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2022

A standardized quantitative analysis strategy for stable isotope probing metagenomics

Stable isotope probing (SIP) facilitates culture-independent identification of active microbial populations within complex ecosystems through isotopic enrichment of nucleic acids. Many SIP studies rely on 16S rRNA sequences to identify active taxa but connecting these sequences to specific bacterial genomes is often challenging. Here, we describe a standardized laboratory and analysis framework to quantify isotopic enrichment on a per-genome basis using shotgun metagenomics instead of 16S rRNA sequencing. To develop this framework, we explored various sample processing and analysis approaches using a designed microbiome where the identity of labeled genomes, and their level of isotopic enrichment, were experimentally controlled. With this ground truth dataset, we empirically assessed the accuracy of different analytic models for identifying active taxa, and examined how sequencing depth impacts the detection of isotopically labeled genomes. We also demonstrate that using synthetic DNA internal standards to measure absolute genome abundances in SIP density fractions improves estimates of isotopic enrichment. In addition, our study illustrates the utility of internal standards to reveal anomalies in sample handling that could negatively impact SIP metagenomic analyses if left undetected. Finally, we present SIPmg, an R package to facilitate the estimation of absolute abundances and perform statistical analyses for identifying labeled genomes within SIP metagenomic data. This experimentally validated analysis framework strengthens the foundation of DNA-SIP metagenomics as a tool for accurately measuring the in situ activity of environmental microbial populations and assessing their genomic potential. ImportanceAnswering the question of who is eating what? within complex microbial communities is paramount for our ability to model, predict, and modulate microbiomes for improved human and planetary health. This question is often pursued using stable isotope probing to track the incorporation of labeled compounds into cellular DNA during microbial growth. However, with traditional stable isotope methods, it is challenging to establish links between an active microorganisms taxonomic identity and genome composition, while providing quantitative estimates of the microorganisms isotope incorporation rate. Here, we report an experimental and analytical workflow that lays the foundation for improved detection of metabolically active microorganisms and better quantitative estimates of genome-resolved isotope incorporation, which can be used to further refine ecosystem-scale models for carbon and nutrient fluxes within microbiomes.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2022

Genomic features predict bacterial life history strategies in soil, as identified by metagenomic stable isotope probing

Bacteria catalyze the formation and destruction of soil organic matter, but the bacterial dynamics in soil that govern carbon (C) cycling are not well understood. Life history strategies explain the complex dynamics of bacterial populations and activities based on tradeoffs in energy allocation to growth, resource acquisition, and survival. Such tradeoffs influence the fate of soil C, but their genomic basis remains poorly characterized. We used multi-substrate metagenomic DNA stable isotope probing to link genomic features of bacteria to their C acquisition and growth dynamics. We identify several genomic features associated with patterns of bacterial C acquisition and growth, notably genomic investment in resource acquisition and regulatory flexibility. Moreover, we identify genomic tradeoffs defined by numbers of transcription factors, membrane transporters, and secreted products, which match predictions from life history theory. We further show that genomic investment in resource acquisition and regulatory flexibility can predict bacterial ecological strategies in soil.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2022

Distribution and abundance of tetraether lipid cyclization genes in terrestrial hot springs reflects pH

Many Archaea produce membrane-spanning glycerol dibiphytanyl glycerol tetraether (GDGTs) lipids that serve as unique biomarkers of past environments. These lipids can contain up to eight cyclopentane rings, where an increase in ring cyclization is generally associated with growth in more acidic, higher temperature, or more energy limited conditions. Recently the genes that encode GDGT ring synthases, grsAB, were identified and characterized in model thermoacidophiles Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and Saccharolobus solfataricus. However, the distribution and abundance of grs homologs across environments inhabited by these and related Archaea remains unknown. To address this, we examined the distribution of grs homologs in archaeal and bacterial cultivar genomes, single cell genomes, metagenomes, and metatranscriptomes from thermal springs across the planet, where temperature, pH, and geochemical data take at time of sampling. The relative abundance of grs in these microbial communities exhibits a strong negative correlation with pH, and weak positive correlation with temperature. Genomes and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from Archaea that encode two or more copies of grs are significantly more widespread in low pH springs. Homologs of grs were detected in MAGs from 12 archaeal classes, with the most well-represented being the Thermoproteia. Homologs of grs were also detected among several classes of uncultured Archaea, including the Korarchaeia, Bathyarchaeia, and Hadarchaeia. Several Nitrososphaeria MAGs had high copy numbers of grs (> 3), and the functional role of these copies cannot yet be explained. Notably, grs genes were also found in MAGs from the bacterial class Acidobacteria. Based on phylogenetic analyses, it is likely that Acidobacteria acquired these genes horizontally from Archaea. Broadly, our results highlight the key role of grs-catalyzed lipid cyclization in the diversification of Archaea in hot and acidic environments.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2021

The Food Additive Xanthan Gum Drives Adaptation of the Human Gut Microbiota

The diets of industrialized countries reflect the increasing use of processed foods, often with the introduction of novel food additives. Xanthan gum is a complex polysaccharide with unique rheological properties that have established its use as a widespread stabilizer and thickening agent1. However, little is known about its direct interaction with the gut microbiota, which plays a central role in digestion of other, chemically-distinct dietary fiber polysaccharides. Here, we show that the ability to digest xanthan gum is surprisingly common in industrialized human gut microbiomes and appears to be contingent on the activity of a single bacterium that is a member of an uncultured bacterial genus in the family Ruminococcaceae. We used a combination of enrichment culture, multi-omics, and recombinant enzyme studies to identify and characterize a complete pathway in this uncultured bacterium for the degradation of xanthan gum. Our data reveal that this keystone degrader cleaves the xanthan gum backbone with a novel glycoside hydrolase family 5 (GH5) enzyme before processing the released oligosaccharides using additional enzymes. Surprisingly, some individuals harbor a Bacteroides species that is capable of consuming oligosaccharide products generated by the keystone Ruminococcaceae or a purified form of the GH5 enzyme. This Bacteroides symbiont is equipped with its own distinct enzymatic pathway to cross-feed on xanthan gum breakdown products, which still harbor the native linkage complexity in xanthan gum, but it cannot directly degrade the high molecular weight polymer. Thus, the introduction of a common food additive into the human diet in the past 50 years has promoted the establishment of a food chain involving at least two members of different phyla of gut bacteria.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2020

Isolation of potential plant growth-promoting bacteria from nodules of legumes grown in arid Botswana soil

As the world population increases, improvements in crop growth and yield will be needed to meet rising food demands, especially in countries that have not developed agricultural practices optimized for their own soils and crops. In many African countries, farmers improve agricultural productivity by applying synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to crops, but their continued use over the years has had serious environmental consequences including air and water pollution as well as loss of soil fertility. To reduce the overuse of synthetic amendments, we are developing inocula for crops that are based on indigenous soil microbes, especially those that enhance plant growth and improve agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner. We first isolated environmental DNA from soil samples collected from an agricultural region to study the composition of the soil microbiomes and then used Vigna unguiculata (cowpea), an important legume crop in Botswana and other legumes as "trap" plants using the collected soil to induce nitrogen-fixing nodule formation. We have identified drought-tolerant bacteria from Botswana soils that stimulate plant growth; many are species of Bacillus and Paenibacillus. In contrast, the cowpea nodule microbiomes from plants grown in these soils house mainly rhizobia particularly Bradyrhizobium, but also Methylobacterium spp. Hence, the nodule microbiome is much more limited in non-rhizobial diversity compared to the soil microbiome, but also contains a number of potential pathogenic bacteria.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2020

Ecology and molecular targets of hypermutation in the global microbiome.

Changes in the sequence of an organisms genome, i.e. mutations, are the raw material of evolution1. The frequency and location of mutations can be constrained by specific molecular mechanisms, such as Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs)2-4. DGRs introduce mutations in specific target genes, and were characterized from several cultivated bacteria and bacteriophages2. Whilst a larger diversity of DGR loci has been identified in genomic data from environmental samples, i.e. metagenomes, the ecological role of these DGRs and their associated evolutionary drivers remain poorly understood5-7. Here we built and analyzed an extensive dataset of >30,000 metagenome-derived DGRs, and determine that DGRs have a single evolutionary origin and a universal bias towards adenine mutations. We further identified six major lineages of DGRs, each associated with a specific ecological niche defined as a genome type, i.e. whether the DGR is encoded on a viral or cellular genome, a limited set of taxa and environments, and a distinct type of target. Finally, we leverage read mapping and metagenomic time series to demonstrate that DGRs are consistently and broadly active, and responsible for >10% of all amino acid changes in some organisms at a conservative estimate. Overall, these results highlight the strong constraints under which DGRs diversify and expand, and elucidate several distinct roles these elements play in natural communities and in shaping microbial community structure and function in our environment.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2020

Host population diversity as a driver of viral infection cycle in wild populations of green sulfur bacteria with long standing virus-host interactions

Viral infections of bacterial hosts range from highly lytic to lysogenic, where highly lytic viruses undergo viral replication and immediately lyse their hosts, and lysogenic viruses have a latency period before replication and host lysis. While both types of infections are routinely observed in the environment, the ecological and evolutionary processes that regulate these different viral dynamics are still not well understood. In this study, we identify and characterize the long-term dynamics of uncultivated viruses infecting green sulfur bacteria (GSB) in a model freshwater lake sampled from 2005-2018. Because of the additional requirements for the laboratory cultivation of anaerobes like GSB, viruses infecting GSB have yet to be formally identified, leaving their diversity and impact on natural populations of GSB virtually unknown. In this study, we used two approaches to identify viruses infecting GSB; one in vitro based on flow cytometry cell sorting, the other in silico based on CRISPR spacer sequences. We then took advantage of existing bulk metagenomes derived from Trout Bog Lake covering the 2005-2018 period to examine the interactions between GSB hosts and their viruses across multiple years and seasons. From our data, GSB populations in Trout Bog Lake were found to be concurrently infected with at least 2-8 viruses each, many of which were lysogenic viruses; one GSB host population in particular was consistently associated with two lysogens with a nearly 100% infection rate for over 10 years. We illustrate with a theoretical infection model that such an interaction can be stable over multiple years given a low, but persistent level of lysogen induction in host populations with already high infection rates. Overall, our data suggest that single GSB populations are typically infected by multiple viruses at the same time, that lytic and lysogenic viruses can readily co-infect the same host population in the same ecosystem, and that host strain-level diversity might be an important factor controlling the lytic/lysogeny switch.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2020

Diversity and Distribution of a Novel Genus of Hyperthermophilic Aquificae Viruses Encoding a Proof-reading Family-A DNA Polymerase

Despite the high abundance of Aquificae in many geothermal systems, these bacteria are difficult to culture and no viruses infecting members of this phylum have been isolated. Here, we describe the complete, circular dsDNA Uncultivated Virus Genome (UViG) of Thermocrinis Octopus Spring virus (TOSV), derived from metagenomic data, along with eight related UViGs representing three additional species, Thermocrinis Great Boiling Spring virus (TGBSV), Aquificae Josephs Coat Spring Virus (AJCSV), and Aquificae Conch Spring Virus (ACSV). Four near-complete UViGs, ranged from 37,256 bp to 41,208 bp and encoded 48 to 53 open reading frames. Despite low overall similarity between viruses from different hot springs, the genomes shared a high degree of synteny, and encoded numerous genes for nucleotide metabolism, including a polyprotein PolA-type polymerase with likely accessory functions, a DNA Pol III beta subunit (sliding clamp), a thymidylate kinase, a DNA gyrase, a helicase, and a DNA methylase. Also present were conserved genes predicted to code for phage capsids, large and small terminases, portal protein, holin, and lytic transglycosylase, all consistent with a distant relatedness to cultivated Caudovirales. TOSV and TGBSV had the highest coverage in their respective metagenomes and are predicted to infect Thermocrinis ruber and Thermocrinis jamiesonii, respectively, as multiple CRISPR spacers matching the viral genomes were identified within Thermocrinis ruber OC1/4T and Thermocrinis jamiesonii GBS1T. Based on the predicted, unusual bi-directional replication strategy, low sequence similarity to known viral genomes, and a unique position in gene-sharing networks, we propose a new putative genus, Pyrovirus, in the order Caudovirales.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2019

Cryptic inoviruses are pervasive in bacteria and archaea across Earth's biomes

Bacteriophages from the Inoviridae family (inoviruses) are characterized by their unique morphology, genome content, and infection cycle. To date, a relatively small number of inovirus isolates have been extensively studied, either for biotechnological applications such as phage display, or because of their impact on the toxicity of known bacterial pathogens including Vibrio cholerae and Neisseria meningitidis. Here we show that the current 56 members of the Inoviridae family represent a minute fraction of a highly diverse group of inoviruses. Using a new machine learning approach leveraging a combination of marker gene and genome features, we identified 10,295 inovirus-like genomes from microbial genomes and metagenomes. Collectively, these represent six distinct proposed inovirus families infecting nearly all bacterial phyla across virtually every ecosystem. Putative inoviruses were also detected in several archaeal genomes, suggesting that these viruses may have occasionally transferred from bacterial to archaeal hosts. Finally, we identified an expansive diversity of inovirus-encoded toxin-antitoxin and gene expression modulation systems, alongside evidence of both synergistic (CRISPR evasion) and antagonistic (superinfection exclusion) interactions with co-infecting viruses which we experimentally validated in a Pseudomonas model. Capturing this previously obscured component of the global virosphere sparks new avenues for microbial manipulation approaches and innovative biotechnological applications.

microbiology↗