Recent studies have significantly expanded our knowledge of viral diversity and functions in the environment. Exploring the ecological relationships between viruses, hosts, and the environment is a crucial first step towards a deeper understanding of the complex and dynamic interplays among them. Here, we obtained extensive 16S rRNA gene amplicon, metagenomics sequencing, and geochemical datasets from different depths of two highly stratified sulfidic mine tailings cores with steep geochemical gradients especially pH, and explored how variations in viral community composition and functions were coupled to the co-existing prokaryotic assemblages and the varying environmental conditions. Our data showed that many viruses in the mine tailings represented novel genera, based on gene-sharing networks. Siphoviridae, Podoviridae, and Myoviridae dominated the classified viruses in the surface tailings and deeper layers. Both viral richness and normalized coverage increased with depth in the tailings cores and were significantly correlated with geochemical properties, for example, pH. Viral richness was also coupled to prokaryotic richness (Pearson’s r = 0.65, P = 0.032). The enrichment of prophages in the surface mine tailings suggested a preference of lysogenic viral lifestyle in more acidic conditions. Community-wide comparative analyses clearly showed that viruses in the surface tailings encoded genes mostly with unknown functions while viruses in the deeper layers contained genes mainly annotated as conventional functions related to metabolism and structure. Notably, significantly abundant assimilatory sulfate reduction genes were identified from the deeper tailings layers and they were widespread in viruses predicted to infect diverse bacterial phyla. Overall, our results revealed a depth-related distribution of viral populations in the extreme and heterogeneous tailings system. The viruses may interact with diverse hosts and dynamic environmental conditions and likely play a role in the functioning of microbial community and modulate sulfur cycles in situ.

中文翻译：

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高度分层的硫矿尾矿中病毒群落的深度相关变异性。

最近的研究极大地扩展了我们对环境中病毒多样性和功能的认识。探索病毒，宿主和环境之间的生态关系是迈向深入了解它们之间复杂和动态相互作用的关键的第一步。在这里，我们从两个具有陡峭地球化学梯度（特别是pH值）的高度分层的硫矿尾矿岩心的不同深度获得了广泛的16S rRNA基因扩增子，宏基因组学测序和地球化学数据集，并探讨了病毒群落组成和功能的变异如何与共现有的原核生物组合和变化的环境条件。我们的数据显示，基于基因共享网络，矿山尾矿中的许多病毒代表了新的属。剑叶病毒科，痘病毒科，肌病毒科在表面尾矿和更深层中占据了分类病毒的主导地位。病毒丰富度和归一化覆盖率均随尾矿岩心深度的增加而增加，并且与地球化学性质（例如pH）显着相关。病毒丰富度还与原核生物丰富度相关（Pearson r = 0.65，P = 0.032）。露天矿尾矿中的前噬菌体富集表明，在更酸性的条件下倾向于溶原性病毒的生活方式。整个社区的比较分析清楚地表明，表面尾矿中的病毒编码的基因大多具有未知的功能，而深层病毒中的病毒所含基因主要被标注为与代谢和结构有关的常规功能。值得注意的是 从更深的尾矿层中鉴定出大量丰富的同化硫酸盐还原基因，它们广泛存在于预计会感染多种细菌门的病毒中。总体而言，我们的研究结果揭示了极端和异质尾矿系统中病毒种群的深度相关分布。病毒可能与各种宿主和动态环境条件相互作用，并可能在微生物群落的功能中发挥作用，并就地调节硫循环。