Search results for "bacteriophage"
showing 10 items of 177 documents
On-Demand Isolation of Bacteriophages Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria for Personalized Phage Therapy
2015
Bacteriophages are bacterial viruses, capable of killing even multi-drug resistant bacterial cells. For this reason, therapeutic use of phages is considered as a possible alternative to conventional antibiotics. However, phages are very host specific in comparison to wide-spectrum antibiotics and thus preparation of phage-cocktails beforehand against pathogens can be difficult. In this study, we evaluate whether it may be possible to isolate phages on-demand from environmental reservoir. We attempted to enrich infectious bacteriophages from sewage against nosocomial drug-resistant bacterial strains of different medically important species in order to evaluate the probability of discovering …
Social Bacteriophages
2020
This article belongs to the Section Medical Microbiology.
Direct sequencing of human gut virome fractions obtained by flow cytometry
2015
The sequence assembly of the human gut virome encounters several difficulties. A high proportion of human and bacterial matches is detected in purified viral samples. Viral DNA extraction results in a low DNA concentration, which does not reach the minimal limit required for sequencing library preparation. Therefore, the viromes are usually enriched by whole genome amplification, which is, however, prone to the development of chimeras and amplification bias. In addition, as there is a very wide diversity of gut viral species, very extensive sequencing efforts must be made for the assembling of whole viral genomes. We present an approach to improve human gut virome assembly by employing a mo…
Phylogenetic Distribution of Polysaccharide-Degrading Enzymes in Marine Bacteria
2021
Deconstruction is an essential step of conversion of polysaccharides, and polysaccharide-degrading enzymes play a key role in this process. Although there is recent progress in the identification of these enzymes, the diversity and phylogenetic distribution of these enzymes in marine microorganisms remain largely unknown, hindering our understanding of the ecological roles of marine microorganisms in the ocean carbon cycle. Here, we studied the phylogenetic distribution of nine types of polysaccharide-degrading enzymes in marine bacterial genomes. First, we manually compiled a reference sequence database containing 961 experimentally verified enzymes. With this reference database, we annota…
Adapting a Phage to Combat Phage Resistance
2020
Phage therapy is becoming a widely recognized alternative for fighting pathogenic bacteria due to increasing antibiotic resistance problems. However, one of the common concerns related to the use of phages is the evolution of bacterial resistance against the phages, putatively disabling the treatment. Experimental adaptation of the phage (phage training) to infect a resistant host has been used to combat this problem. Yet, there is very little information on the trade-offs of phage infectivity and host range. Here we co-cultured a myophage FCV-1 with its host, the fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare, in lake water and monitored the interaction for a one-month period. Phage resistance was…
Prophages and Past Prophage-Host Interactions Revealed by CRISPR Spacer Content in a Fish Pathogen
2020
The role of prophages in the evolution, diversification, or virulence of the fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare has not been studied thus far. Here, we describe a functional spontaneously inducing prophage fF4 from the F. columnare type strain ATCC 23463, which is not detectable with commonly used prophage search methods. We show that this prophage type has a global distribution and is present in strains isolated from Finland, Thailand, Japan, and North America. The virions of fF4 are myoviruses with contractile tails and infect only bacterial strains originating from Northern Finland. The fF4 resembles transposable phages by similar genome organization and several gene orthologs. Addit…
Isolation and Characterization of Two Klebsiella pneumoniae Phages Encoding Divergent Depolymerases
2020
The emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria is a major global health concern. The search for new therapies has brought bacteriophages into the spotlight, and new phages are being described as possible therapeutic agents. Among the bacteria that are most extensively resistant to current antibiotics is Klebsiella pneumoniae, whose hypervariable extracellular capsule makes treatment particularly difficult. Here, we describe two new K. pneumoniae phages, &pi
The use of low-resolution phasing followed by phase extension from 7.6 to 2.5 Å resolution with noncrystallographic symmetry to solve the structure o…
2011
P2, the major capsid protein of bacteriophage PM2, adopts the double β-barrel fold characteristic of the PRD1-adenoviral lineage. The 2.5 Å resolution X-ray data obtained by analysis of the two major lattices of a multiple crystal of P2 were phased by molecular replacement, using as a search model structure factors to 7.6 Å resolution obtained from electron density cut from the map of the entire PM2 virion. Phase extension to 2.5 Å resolution used solely sixfold cycling averaging and solvent flattening. This represents an atypical example of an oligomeric protein for which the structure has been determined at high resolution by bootstrapping from low-resolution initial phases.
Effective stiffening of DNA due to nematic ordering causes DNA molecules packed in phage capsids to preferentially form torus knots.
2012
Observation that DNA molecules in bacteriophage capsids preferentially form torus type of knots provided a sensitive gauge to evaluate various models of DNA arrangement in phage heads. Only models resulting in a preponderance of torus knots could be considered as close to reality. Recent studies revealed that experimentally observed enrichment of torus knots can be qualitatively reproduced in numerical simulations that include a potential inducing nematic arrangement of tightly packed DNA molecules within phage capsids. Here, we investigate what aspects of the nematic arrangement are crucial for inducing formation of torus knots. Our results indicate that the effective stiffening of DNA by …
Bacteriophage P23-77 capsid protein structures reveal the archetype of an ancient branch from a major virus lineage.
2013
Summary It has proved difficult to classify viruses unless they are closely related since their rapid evolution hinders detection of remote evolutionary relationships in their genetic sequences. However, structure varies more slowly than sequence, allowing deeper evolutionary relationships to be detected. Bacteriophage P23-77 is an example of a newly identified viral lineage, with members inhabiting extreme environments. We have solved multiple crystal structures of the major capsid proteins VP16 and VP17 of bacteriophage P23-77. They fit the 14 Å resolution cryo-electron microscopy reconstruction of the entire virus exquisitely well, allowing us to propose a model for both the capsid archi…