PVJ1 Is Not the First Tailed Temperate Phage Infecting Bacteria from Genus Psychrobacillus. Comment on Liu et al. Isolation and Characterization of the First Temperate Virus Infecting Psychrobacillus from Marine Sediments. Viruses 2022, 14, 108

Abstract

In a recent study published in Viruses [...]

Reply to Zrelovs et al. PVJ1 Is Not the First Tailed Temperate Phage Infecting Bacteria from Genus Psychrobacillus. Comment on “Liu et al. Isolation and Characterization of the First Temperate Virus Infecting Psychrobacillus from Marine Sediments. Viruses 2022, 14, 108”

“…We thank Zrelovs et al [ 1 ] for drawing our attention to the fact that they deposited the first virus genomes (i.e., MT325768.1 and MT410774.1) in the GenBank database, which they indicated in the database entries were from Psychrobacillus phages, termed Perkons and Spoks, respectively, ahead of our submission of the PVJ1 genome sequence. They speculated correctly that we did not perform a sequence database search with Psychrobacillus phage-related queries immediately before the submission of our paper [ 2 ].…”

“…The authors are apparently aware of the flaw with that claim as they explained in their comment: ‘Despite the fact that there is a large fraction of complete annotated phage genome entries publicly available that still do not have an article or at least a genome announcement from the peer-reviewed literature linked to them for a variety of reasons (including Psychrobacillus phages Perkons and Spoks), we believe it is incorrect to ignore the existence of such entries when analyzing the place of any newly isolated phage within the context of known phages, regardless of the phages not being mentioned anywhere in the peer-reviewed literature’ [ 1 ]. Furthermore, they tried to fill the gaps in the data by providing some experimental details relevant to the isolation of Perkons and Spoks in their comment [ 1 ]. Obviously, this latest explanatory information, though still incomplete, should have been presented in a peer-reviewed fashion when they claimed to have found the first Psychrobacillus phages.…”