What are the relative abundances of Prochlorococcus prophage in natural communities?
Estimating the abundance of prophage in a natural community has traditionally been difficult due to the dependence upon culture-based techniques selecting at two levels (the culturability of the host and the culturability of the phage) and due to the unknown selection of an appropriate inducing agent to target “all prophage.” Through statistical analysis of our BAC clone libraries, we will have the unique opportunity to be able to approximate the abundance of prophage within the Prochlorococcus community using culture-independent techniques. Do prophage confer host cell fitness advantages and drive niche diversification of Prochlorococcus? We know from other phage-host systems that prophage often encode virulence factors and / or novel genes that allow significant fitness advantages of a lysogenic (prophage-containing) cell over non-prophage containing cells. Detailed characterization of prophage from our BAC libraries will allow for the identification of genes encoding such factors th
