Nested parasitism in hypersaline environments: viruses and virus satellites of haloarchaea and their nanosized cellular symbionts

Abstract

It is increasingly recognized that hyperparasitism, whereby a parasite exploits a host which itself is a parasite, is a common phenomenon across ecosystems and domains of life. Here, to explore hyperparasitism in Archaea, we focused on ultra-small archaea of the phylum Nanohaloarchaeota, a distinct lineage within the DPANN superphylum, which establish obligate symbiotic interactions with extreme halophiles of the class Halobacteria. We assembled five metagenomes originating from geothermally influenced salt lakes in the Danakil Depression, Ethiopia, and reconstructed the viromes associated with both haloarchaea and nanohaloarchaea. Both archaeal lineages were associated with viruses from four distinct groups, including head-tailed viruses (class Caudoviricetes), tailless icosahedral viruses, pleomorphic viruses and spindle-shaped viruses, which represent 12 previously undescribed families. The haloarchaeal viruses (HVs) and nanohaloarchaeal viruses (NHVs) are only distantly related, suggesting that viruses from the four groups co-evolved with their respective hosts for an extended period, likely since the divergence of the two archaeal lineages from their last common ancestor. Consistently, our results show that HVs and NHVs are well-adapted to replicate in their respective hosts and to thrive in hypersaline environments. No evidence of host switching between haloarchaea and nanohaloarchaea was obtained, but multiple horizontal transfers of genes implicated in virion structure and morphogenesis between HVs and NHVs were detected. We also identified several NHVs-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes implicated in nucleotide and amino acid metabolisms, which could enhance the metabolic capabilities of the nanohaloarchaeal hosts that have highly reduced genomes. Finally, in addition to HVs and NHVs, we describe plasmid-derived virus satellites that appear to have originated convergently to parasitize spindle-shaped viruses of both haloarchaea and nanohaloarchaea, uncovering an additional layer of parasitism. Collectively, our findings fill the knowledge gap on the diversity of HVs and NHVs, highlight the complexity of virus-host and virus-virus interactions in hypersaline environments, and open doors for further mining of the virosphere of the globally distributed DPANN archaea.