Detection of bacteriophages and cyanophages for water quality control of a water supply system in Amazônia

Abstract

Background: Despite the importance of understanding the ecology of freshwater viruses, there are not many studies on the issue when compared to marine viruses. The microbiological interactions that occur in these environments are still poorly known, especially between bacteriophages and their host bacteria, as well as between cyanophages and cyanobacteria. Lake Bologna, from Belém, capital of the Brazilian State of Pará, is a source of water that supplies the city and its metropolitan region, yet it remains unexplored regarding the contents of its virome and viral diversity composition. Therefore, this work's main aim is to clarify in terms of taxonomic diversity the species of DNA viruses that are present in this lake, especially bacteriophages and cyanophages, since they can act both as transducers of resistance genes and reporters of water quality for human consumption. Results: For this work, we used the metagenomic sequencing data generated by Alves et al. (2020), and we analyzed it at the taxonomic level using the tools Kraken2, Bracken, and Pavian; later, the data was assembled using Genome Detective, which performs assembly of viruses. The results observed in this work suggest the existence of a widely diverse viral community and an established microbial phage regulated dynamics in the Lake Bolonha. Conclusions: This work is the first-ever to describe the virome of Lake Bolonha using a metagenomic approach based on high-throughput sequencing, as it contributes to the understanding of water-related public health concerns regarding the spreading of antibiotic resistance genes and population control of native bacteria and cyanobacteria.