Published in Scientific Reports
Acquisition of new prophages that are able to increase the bacterial fitness by the lysogenic conversion is believed to be an important strategy of bacterial adaptation to the changing environment. However, in contrast to the factors determining the range of bacteriophage lytic activity, little is known about the factors that define the lysogenizat...
Published in Scientific Reports
In the era where antibiotic resistance is considered one of the major worldwide concerns, bacteriophages have emerged as a promising therapeutic approach to deal with this problem. Genetically engineered bacteriophages can enable enhanced anti-bacterial functionalities, but require cloning additional genes into the phage genomes, which might be cha...
Published in Communications Biology
Vacheron et al. visualize the dynamics of production, cellular transport and release of phage tail-like devices called R-tailocins by Pseudomonas bacteria and demonstrate their kin killing activity at single-cell level. The study offers insights into microbial competition mechanisms.
Published in Scientific Reports
Bacteriophages, or phages, are ubiquitous bacterial and archaeal viruses with an estimated total global population of 1031. It is well-known that wherever there are bacteria, their phage counterparts will be found, aiding in shaping the bacterial population. The present study used metagenomic data from global influent sewage in 79 cities in 60 coun...
Published in Scientific Reports
Modification of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) is the first line of Gram-negative bacteria defence against antimicrobials. Here we point to Proteus mirabilis OMPs and their role in antibiotic and phage resistance. Protein profiles of amikacin (AMKrsv), phage (Brsv) and amikacin/phage (AMK/Brsv) resistant variants of P. mirabilis were compared to th...
Published in Scientific Reports
Nowadays, bacteriophages are increasingly considered as an alternative treatment for a variety of bacterial infections in cases where classical antibiotics have become ineffective. However, characterizing the host specificity of phages remains a labor- and time-intensive process. In order to alleviate this burden, we have developed a new machine-le...
Published in Nature Communications
Virus speciation cannot be fully explained by the evolution of different host specificities. Here, Chaikeeratisak et al. identify ways viruses can remain genetically isolated despite co-infecting the same cell, providing insight into how new virus species evolve.
Understanding how biological species arise is critical for understanding the evolution of life on Earth. Bioinformatic analyses have recently revealed that viruses, like multicellular life, form reproductively isolated biological species. Viruses are known to share high rates of genetic exchange, so how do they evolve genetic isolation? Here, we ev...
Published in Scientific Reports
CrAssphages are a diverse group of related phages detected in human feces where they are the most prevalent and abundant prokaryotic virus. CrAssphages’ cellular host has been identified as the anaerobic Bacteroides intestinalis. CrAssphage has also been reported in non-human primates and environmental samples and has been proposed as a marker of h...
Published in Scientific Reports
Bacteriophage communities associated with humans and vertebrate animals have been extensively studied, but the data on phages living in invertebrates remain scarce. In fact, they have never been reported for most animal phyla. Our ultrastructural study showed for the first time a variety of virus-like particles (VLPs) and supposed virus-related str...
