Estimating roughly, how much of a bacterial genome is thought to be of viral origin?

Submitted by josephrainer t3_10yti6r in askscience

Talking about integration of viral DNA into the chromosome. I am wondering since estimates for the amount of viral-originating DNA in humans range from 8-40%.

I know “bacteria” is way too large a category for a definitive answer. But on average, is it thought that the proportion in bacteria thought to be larger?

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omgu8mynewt t1_j81g4bj wrote

In bacteria, dormant viruses in the genome are called prophages. I found one paper, in eight E. coli strains, between 8-22 prophages were predicted to be found in each strain's genome. E coli genome is approximately 5.6 Mb. Prophage genomes were from 5.6 to 131.9 kb, say on average 70 Kb. So on average, (14 prophages x 70,000) / 5,600,00 * 100 = 17.5%. Very back of the envolope maths, and only for E coli, results will vary wildly. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.03093/full

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