Genetic diversity of capsid assembly protein genes (g20) of cyanophage in different natural environment—A review

Abstract:

Abstract:With the development of molecular biological techniques and progress of sequencing virus genome，scientists pay great attentions tothe genetic diversity of viruses，which are ubiquitous and abundant in natural environments．So far，no universal genetic marker，analogous to 16S rDNA and 18S rDNAused for microbial communities exists throughout all viruses．However，some family-specific genes encodingconserved amino acids have been proposed for the evaluation of phage diversity and a series of breakthroughachievements were obtained．In this paper，we targeted the capsid assembly protein genes (g20) of cyanophages and reviewed the recent progress on their genetic diversity in natural environments of marines，lakes and paddy fields and discussed the relationship between distribution of g20 gene of cyanophages and its environments．Those studies showed that the distribution of g20 gene varied with environments and many unique clusters were found in different natural environment． In final，several research issues and the future research tendencies for the study of environmental g20 gene were also addressed in this paper．