2017年10月13日，本课题组谢彰先博士和马里兰大学陈峰教授以共同第一作者的身份在《Environmental Microbiology》 的发表题为“Metaproteomics of marine viral concentrates reveals key viral populations and abundant periplasmic proteins in the oligotrophic deep chlorophyll maximum of the South China Sea”文章，首次表征了海洋病毒浓缩液中的蛋白组分，揭示了游离的浮游病毒群落的重要类群及释放到水体中的重要非病毒蛋白，如大量转运蛋白和SBP56蛋白。

Abstract:

Viral concentrates (VCs), containing bioinformative DNA and proteins, have been used to study viral diversity, viral metagenomics and virus–host interactions in natural ecosystems. Besides viruses, VCs also contain many noncellular biological components including diverse functional proteins. Here, we used a shotgun proteomic approach to characterize the proteins of VCs collected from the oligotrophic deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) of the South China Sea. Proteins of viruses infecting picophytoplankton, that is, cyanobacteria and prasinophytes, and heterotrophic bacterioplankton, such as SAR11 and SAR116, dominated the viral proteome. Almost no proteins from RNA viruses or known gene transfer agents were detected, suggesting that they were not abundant at the sampling site. Remarkably, nonviral proteins made up about two thirds of VC proteins, including overwhelmingly abundant periplasmic transporters for nutrient acquisition and proteins for diverse cellular processes, that is, translation, energy metabolism and one carbon metabolism. Interestingly, three 56 kDa selenium-binding proteins putatively involved in peroxide reduction from gammaproteobacteria were abundant in the VCs, suggesting active removal of peroxide compounds at DCM. Our study demonstrated that metaproteomics provides a valuable avenue to explore the diversity and structure of the viral community and also the pivotal biological functions affiliated with microbes in the natural environment.

Link to the full text:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1462-2920.13937/full