Lingjie Meng

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at Kyoto Univeristy at Kyoto University

Giant viruses are crucial for marine ecosystem dynamics because they regulate microeukaryotic community structure, accelerate carbon and nutrient cycles, and drive the evolution of their hosts through co-evolutionary processes. Previously reported long-term observations revealed that these viruses display seasonal fluctuations in abundance. However...

Giant viruses (GVs) significantly regulate the ecological dynamics of diverse ecosystems. Although metagenomics has expanded our understanding of their diversity and ecological roles played in marine environments, little is known about GVs of freshwater ecosystems. Most previous studies have employed short-read sequencing and therefore resulted in...

The phylum Nucleocytoviricota comprises a diverse group of double-stranded DNA viruses that display a wide range of gene repertoires. Although these gene repertoires determine the characteristics of individual viruses, the evolutionary processes that have shaped the gene repertoires of extant viruses since their common ancestor are poorly character...

Giant viruses are crucial for marine ecosystem dynamics because they regulate microeukaryotic community structure, accelerate carbon and nutrient cycles, and drive the evolution of their hosts through co-evolutionary processes. Previously reported long-term observations revealed that these viruses display fluctuations in abundance. However, the und...

Giant viruses significantly regulate the ecological dynamics of diverse ecosystems. Although metagenomics has expanded our understanding of their diversity and ecological roles played in marine environments, little is known about giant viruses of freshwater ecosystems. Most previous studies have employed short-read sequencing and therefore resulted...

Giant viruses are extraordinary members of the virosphere due to their structural complexity and high diversity in gene content. Haptophytes are ecologically important primary producers in the ocean, and all known viruses that infect haptophytes are giant viruses. Our in-depth electron microscopic, phylogenomic and virion proteomic analyses of two...

A recent metagenomic study has revealed a novel group of viruses designated mirusviruses, which are proposed to form an evolutionary link between two double-stranded DNA virus realms, Varidnaviria and Duplodnaviria . Metagenomic data suggest that these viruses infect marine microeukaryotes, but their host range remains largely unknown. In this stud...

Most fungal viruses are RNA viruses, and no double-stranded DNA virus that infects fungi is known to date. A recent study detected DNA polymerase genes that originated from large dsDNA viruses in the genomes of basal fungi, suggestive of the existence of dsDNA viruses capable of infecting fungi. In this study, we searched for viral infection signat...

Despite being perennially frigid, polar oceans form an ecosystem hosting high and unique biodiversity. Various organisms show different adaptive strategies in this habitat, but how viruses adapt to this environment is largely unknown. Viruses of phyla Nucleocytoviricota and Mirusviricota are groups of eukaryote-infecting large and giant DNA viruses...

Horizontal gene transfers (HGTs) integrate all forms of life and viruses into a vast network of gene flow, which facilitates the transmission of genes beyond vertical inheritance and enhances genomic evolution. HGT is known to occur between closely related viruses. We hypothesized that there is frequent HGT among nucleocytoviruses, a group of diver...

DNA viruses have a major influence on the ecology and evolution of cellular organisms, but their overall diversity and evolutionary trajectories remain elusive. Here we carried out a phylogeny-guided genome-resolved metagenomic survey of the sunlit oceans and discovered plankton-infecting relatives of herpesviruses that form a putative new phylum d...

Despite being perennially frigid, polar oceans form an ecosystem hosting high and unique biodiversity. Various organisms show different adaptative strategies in this habitat, but how viruses adapt to this environment is largely unknown. Viruses of phyla Nucleocytoviricota and Mirusviricota are groups of eukaryote-infecting large and giant DNA virus...

DNA viruses have a major influence on the ecology and evolution of cellular organisms, but their overall diversity and evolutionary trajectories remain elusive. Here, we performed a phylogeny-guided genome-resolved metagenomic survey of the sunlit oceans and discovered plankton-infecting relatives of herpesviruses that form a putative new phylum du...

Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) are highly diverse and abundant in marine environments. However, the knowledge of their hosts is limited because only a few NCLDVs have been isolated so far. Taking advantage of the recent large-scale marine metagenomics census, in silico host prediction approaches are expected to fill the gap and furthe...

Nucleocytoplasmic DNA viruses (NCLDVs) are highly diverse and abundant in marine environments. However, knowledge of their hosts is limited because only a few NCLDVs have been isolated. By taking advantage of the rapidly increasing metagenomic data, in silico host prediction approaches are expected to fill this gap between known virus–host relation...

Aeromonas salmonicida (A. salmonicida) is a pathogenic bacterium that causes furunculosis and poses a significant global risk, particularly in economic activities such as Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farming. In a previous study, we identified proteins that are significantly upregulated in kidneys of Atlantic salmon challenged with A. salmonicida....

Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. masoucida (ASM) is classified as atypical A. salmonicida and brought huge economic damages to the local salmonid aquaculture in China. An ASM strain named AS-C4 was used to investigate the colonization of ASM in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) by an immersion challenge with the control group (T0, no AS-C4), group T1 (2...

Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) belong to a super-family of detoxifying proteins and perform a significant role in developing epithelial homeostasis, protecting cells from toxic aldehydes and drug resistance. However, the activity and function of these detoxifying proteins remain unknown, especially in fish. In our research, we aimed to study funct...

Quorum sensing is a bacterial density dependent communication system, which regarded to regulate co-operative behaviors of community and mediated by extracellular signal molecules named autoinducers (AI). Among various signals, autoinducer-2 (AI-2) is believed to be the messengers inter species and produced by LuxS. For Aeromonas salmonicida (A. sa...

Aeromonas salmonicida is a major etiologic agent which induces furunculosis and is globally harmful in salmonid and turbot cultures, especially in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farming. In order to improve knowledge of its poorly understood pathogenesis, we utilized high-throughput proteomics to display differentially expressed proteins in the kidn...

A rapid, economical, specific, and sensitive quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay coupled with SYBR Green I chemistry was developed for the quantitative detection of Aeromonas salmonicida from farmed Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, with the symptoms of furunculosis. The set of primers designed from the virulence array protein...

Aeromonas salmonicida, an important pathogenic bacterium which induces furunculosis, is globally causing increased risks in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farming. Although the kidney is the main target organ of A. salmonicida, the metabolic profiling of kidney in response to A. salmonicida in vivo remains unknown. Here, we used (1)H nuclear magneti...

The background colour of aquaculture tanks is normally chosen based on practical experience and/or observations of fish behaviour and the growth rates achieved. However, some farmed species, including turbot, are sentient and can show a preference for a particular environment. In the current study, a self-referent colour preference device was devel...

Enzyme activities and gene expression of a number of innate immune parameters in the serum, mucus and skin of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) were investigated after challenge with a pathogenic strain of Aeromonas salmonicida (A. salmonicida). Fish were injected in the dorsal muscle with either 100 μl bacterium solution, about 3.05 × 107 CFU/ml A. sa...