For instance, bacteriophages that infect the abundant marine cyanobacteria Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus (cyanophages) carry AMGs that have been acquired from their immediate host as well as more distantly-related bacteria.
psbA is almost a ubiquitous photosynthetic AMG for the photosystem Il reaction center D1 found in Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus cyanophages.
Temperate viruses, on the other hand, may employ AMGs to improve host fitness and virulence due to their often longer lifespan in the cell as a prophage.
In marine environments, AMGs can confer fitness advantages for both host and viruses under relatively nutrient-limited conditions compared to sediment and strong ultraviolet stress of water.
[6] In sunlit versus dark ocean waters, AMGs in distinct pathways are unequally distributed to reprogram host energy production and viral replication based on available nutrients.
[17] In sedimentary environments, carbon and sulfur metabolism AMGs are typically more prevalent to outcompete other organisms for the abundant resources.
[21] DRAM-v searches the following databases for AMGs that match the input MAGs: Pfam, KEGG, UniProt, CAZy, MEROPS, VOGDB, and NCBI Viral RefSeq.
ViromeQC[25] can display contamination for the dataset overall and DRAM-v assigns a confidence score for the AMG being on a viral MAG.
[30] Possible AMG contexts can be divided into locally collinear blocks (LCBs), or homologous regions shared by multiple viruses without rearrangements.
The vast majority of gene transfer occurs in double-stranded DNA viruses since they have large and flexible genomes, co-evolution with eukaryotes, and wide host breadth.
This interaction can either enhance or inhibit enzyme activity, leading to changes in the rate of metabolic flux through specific pathways.
AMGs have a large impact on biogeochemical cycles in multiple environments through nutrient degradation, mineralization, transportation, assimilation, and transformation.
[32] AMG modification of host processes is another means other than the viral shunt by which viruses can directly impact biogeochemical cycles.
[33] The ability of AMGs modulating the metabolic capacities of their hosts can influence the abundance and distribution of specific microbial taxa.
In extreme environments, AMGs can encode for alternate energy pathways such as subunits of dissimilatory sulfite reductase.
[34] The ability of viruses to confer new metabolic traits to their hosts enhances the resilience of microbial communities facing shifts in temperature, nutrient availability, or other environmental stressors.