Viral communities of Shark Bay modern stromatolites

Viral metagenomic shotgun sequencing were undertook to explore the diversity of viruses in modern stromatolites of Shark Bay. The Shark Bay viral community consists of mainly single stranded DNA viruses (ssDNA viruses), and have a similar diversity of ssDNA as of stromatolites in Highbourne Cay, Bahamas. Two putative viral genomes were assembled from the pyrosequencing data that are related to Genomoviridae family of ssDNA viruses. The cellular fraction of the data was shown to be enriched for antiviral defense genes including CRISPR-Cas, BREX (bacteriophage exclution), and DISARM (defense island system associated with restriction-modification).