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A Bioinformatics Approach To Revealing The Genetic Basis For Host Range Specificity, Hayley A. Norian
A Bioinformatics Approach To Revealing The Genetic Basis For Host Range Specificity, Hayley A. Norian
James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect bacteria. Mycobacteriophages are bacteriophages that specifically infect the genus Mycobacterium. This genus of bacteria includes human pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium ulcerans, which cause tuberculosis, leprosy and Buruli ulcer, respectively. The full genome sequences of 654 mycobacteriophages are currently available. Collectively, these 654 phages encode 69,581 genes. Only 20.25% of these genes have at least one known homologue in NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, leaving roughly 80% of all known mycobacteriophage genes without even a predicted function. Bacteriophages are highly host-specific and typically only infect a small …