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The paper
M. Jahn et al., “A phage protein aids bacterial symbionts in eukaryote immune evasion,” Cell Host Microbe, 26:542–50, 2019.
While studying sponges and their endosymbiotic microbes for his PhD, Martin Jahn found himself pondering where viruses fit into the mix. “We didn’t know anything about the viruses associated with sponges,” says Jahn, now wrapping up his doctorate at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany.
To investigate, Jahn and his colleagues sampled four sponge species off the coast of northern Spain and analyzed both the sponges and samples of the surrounding seawater for the presence of viruses. Not only did the researchers find viruses living in sponges that weren’t in the seawater, they discovered substantial diversity in the viromes of different species, and even among conspecifics.
Digging further into the genomic data, the team noticed one group of previously unidentified bacteriophages that ...
