Genomic analysis of bacteriophage ε34 of Salmonella entericaserovar Anatum (15+)
Open Access
- 17 December 2008
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in BMC Microbiology
- Vol. 8 (1), 227
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-8-227
Abstract
The presence of prophages has been an important variable in genetic exchange and divergence in most bacteria. This study reports the determination of the genomic sequence of Salmonella phage ε34, a temperate bacteriophage that was important in the early study of prophages that modify their hosts' cell surface and is of a type (P22-like) that is common in Salmonella genomes. The sequence shows that ε34 is a mosaically related member of the P22 branch of the lambdoid phages. Its sequence is compared with the known P22-like phages and several related but previously unanalyzed prophage sequences in reported bacterial genome sequences. These comparisons indicate that there has been little if any genetic exchange within the procapsid assembly gene cluster with P22-like E. coli/Shigella phages that are have orthologous but divergent genes in this region. Presumably this observation reflects the fact that virion assembly proteins interact intimately and divergent proteins can no longer interact. On the other hand, non-assembly genes in the "ant moron" appear to be in a state of rapid flux, and regulatory genes outside the assembly gene cluster have clearly enjoyed numerous and recent horizontal exchanges with phages outside the P22-like group. The present analysis also shows that ε34 harbors a gtrABC gene cluster which should encode the enzymatic machinery to chemically modify the host O antigen polysaccharide, thus explaining its ability to alter its host's serotype. A comprehensive comparative analysis of the known phage gtrABC gene clusters shows that they are highly mobile, having been exchanged even between phage types, and that most "bacterial" gtrABC genes lie in prophages that vary from being largely intact to highly degraded. Clearly, temperate phages are very major contributors to the O-antigen serotype of their Salmonella hosts.Keywords
This publication has 83 references indexed in Scilit:
- Clustal W and Clustal X version 2.0Bioinformatics, 2007
- Escherichia coli K1-Specific Bacteriophage CUS-3 Distribution and Function in Phase-Variable Capsular Polysialic Acid O AcetylationJournal of Bacteriology, 2007
- The Genome Sequence of Avian PathogenicEscherichia coliStrain O1:K1:H7 Shares Strong Similarities with Human Extraintestinal PathogenicE. coliGenomesJournal of Bacteriology, 2007
- A New Look at Bacteriophage λ Genetic NetworksJournal of Bacteriology, 2007
- Identification of Specific Gene Sequences Conserved in Contemporary Epidemic Strains ofSalmonella entericaApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2006
- Phage_Finder: Automated identification and classification of prophage regions in complete bacterial genome sequencesNucleic Acids Research, 2006
- Exploring the Mycobacteriophage Metaproteome: Phage Genomics as an Educational PlatformPLoS Genetics, 2006
- Identification of genes subject to positive selection in uropathogenic strains of Escherichia coli : A comparative genomics approachProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006
- Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programsNucleic Acids Research, 1997
- tRNAscan-SE: A Program for Improved Detection of Transfer RNA Genes in Genomic SequenceNucleic Acids Research, 1997