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Bacterial and viral PhoH sequences and metagenome-assembled genomes
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Scientists studying soil and earthworm gut samples found that when microplastics from common plastic waste are present, certain viruses that infect bacteria carry a special gene (PhoH) that helps bacteria access phosphorus, a nutrient they need to survive. This matters because it shows microplastic pollution can quietly reshape the hidden microbial communities in soil that support plant growth and ecosystem health, which ultimately affects the food we eat. This dataset itself is a collection of genetic sequences shared so other researchers can study these bacteria-virus interactions further.
This dataset contains sequence files used in the study “Phage-encoded PhoH alleviates phosphorus limitation under polyethylene microplastic exposure.”PhoH_bacteria.faa contains bacterial PhoH protein sequences retrieved from the NCBI RefSeq database. PhoH_virus.faa contains viral PhoH protein homologs identified from high-confidence viral sequences in the IMG/VR v4 database using the experimentally characterized phage-encoded PhoH as the query. MAGs_fna.tar.gz contains nucleotide FASTA files for 121 metagenome-assembled genomes reconstructed from control and polyethylene-exposed soil and earthworm-gut metagenomes.
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