Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pope, Welkin H
• Ferreira, Christina M
• Jacobs-Sera, Deborah
• Benjamin, Robert C
• Davis, Ariangela J
• DeJong, Randall J
• Elgin, Sarah C R
• Guilfoile, Forrest R
• Forsyth, Mark H
• Harris, Alexander D
• Harvey, Samuel E
• Hughes, Lee E
• Hynes, Peter M
• Jackson, Arrykka S
• Jalal, Marilyn D
• MacMurray, Elizabeth A
• Manley, Coreen M
• McDonough, Molly J
• Mosier, Jordan L
• Osterbann, Larissa J
• Rabinowitz, Hannah S
• Rhyan, Corwin N
• Russell, Daniel A
• Saha, Margaret S
• Shaffer, Christopher D
• Simon, Stephanie E
• Sims, Erika F
• Tovar, Isabel G
• Weisser, Emilie G
• Wertz, John T
• Weston-Hafer, Kathleen A
• Williamson, Kurt E
• Zhang, Bo
• Cresawn, Steven G
• Jain, Paras
• Piuri, Mariana
• Jacobs, Jr, William R
• Hendrix, Roger W
• Hatfull, Graham F
• Bereswill, Stefan

Titel

Cluster K mycobacteriophages: insights into the evolutionary origins of mycobacteriophage TM4

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2011-10, Vol.6 (10), p.e26750

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Five newly isolated mycobacteriophages--Angelica, CrimD, Adephagia, Anaya, and Pixie--have similar genomic architectures to mycobacteriophage TM4, a previously characterized phage that is widely used in mycobacterial genetics. The nucleotide sequence similarities warrant grouping these into Cluster K, with subdivision into three subclusters: K1, K2, and K3. Although the overall genome architectures of these phages are similar, TM4 appears to have lost at least two segments of its genome, a central region containing the integration apparatus, and a segment at the right end. This suggests that TM4 is a recent derivative of a temperate parent, resolving a long-standing conundrum about its biology, in that it was reportedly recovered from a lysogenic strain of Mycobacterium avium, but it is not capable of forming lysogens in any mycobacterial host. Like TM4, all of the Cluster K phages infect both fast- and slow-growing mycobacteria, and all of them--with the exception of TM4--form stable lysogens in both Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis; immunity assays show that all five of these phages share the same immune specificity. TM4 infects these lysogens suggesting that it was either derived from a heteroimmune temperate parent or that it has acquired a virulent phenotype. We have also characterized a widely-used conditionally replicating derivative of TM4 and identified mutations conferring the temperature-sensitive phenotype. All of the Cluster K phages contain a series of well conserved 13 bp repeats associated with the translation initiation sites of a subset of the genes; approximately one half of these contain an additional sequence feature composed of imperfectly conserved 17 bp inverted repeats separated by a variable spacer. The K1 phages integrate into the host tmRNA and the Cluster K phages represent potential new tools for the genetics of M. tuberculosis and related species.