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Updated: Jan 2, 2026

Environmental Sampling of Photosynthetic Microbes and Their Viruses: From Field to Lab
Published on: July 3, 2025
Interaction between cyanophage MaMV-DC and eight Microcystis strains, revealed by genetic defense systems
Juanping Wang1, Peng Bai2, Qi Li3
1State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Key Laboratory of Combinatorial Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery, Ministry of Education, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhongnan Hospital, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China.
Abstract:
Cyanophage MaMV-DC is a member of Myoviridae that was reported to specifically infect and lyse Microcystis aeruginosa FACHB-524 among 21 selected cyanobacterial strains. We reidentified the infection specificity of MaMV-DC among seven other Microcystis strains of different species. In our experiments, MaMV-DC infected three Microcystis strains but did not form plaque in Microcystis lawns. This indicated that MaMV-DC is at least a genus- rather than strain-specific virus. Cyanophage MaMV-DC genes were transcribed in M. aeruginosa FACHB-524, M. flos-aquae TF09, M. aeruginosa TA09 and M. wesenbergii DW09, and the growth of these Microcystis strains was inhibited by the addition of MaMV-DC. The predicted defense of eight Microcystis strains by CRISPR-Cas systems has shown mixed consistency with the infection experiment results, suggesting other defense or anti-defense systems play roles during infection process. Restriction-modification (RM) system analysis revealed an abundance of four types of RM proteins that may play roles in defense against cyanophages.
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