Organisms Commons^™

Tail-Tape-Fused Virion And Non-Virion Rna Polymerases Of A Thermophilic Virus With An Extremely Long Tail, Anastasiia Chaban, Leonid Minakhin, Ekaterina Goldobina, Brain Bae, Yue Hao, Sergei Borukhov, Leena Putzeys, Maarten Boon, Florian Kabinger, Rob Lavigne, Kira S Makarova, Eugene V Koonin, Satish K Nair, Shunsuke Tagami, Konstantin Severinov, Maria L Sokolova

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Faculty Scholarship

Thermus thermophilus bacteriophage P23-45 encodes a giant 5,002-residue tail tape measure protein (TMP) that defines the length of its extraordinarily long tail. Here, we show that the N-terminal portion of P23-45 TMP is an unusual RNA polymerase (RNAP) homologous to cellular RNAPs. The TMP-fused virion RNAP transcribes pre-early phage genes, including a gene that encodes another, non-virion RNAP, that transcribes early and some middle phage genes. We report the crystal structures of both P23-45 RNAPs. The non-virion RNAP has a crab-claw-like architecture. By contrast, the virion RNAP adopts a unique flat structure without a clamp. Structure and sequence comparisons of …

Genomic Diversity Of Bacteriophages Infecting Microbacterium Spp, Deborah Jacobs-Sera, Nathan S. Reyna, Lawrence A. Abad, Richard M. Alvey, Kirk R. Anders, Haley G. Aull, Suparna S. Bhalla, Lawrence S. Blumer, David W. Bollivar, J. Alfred Bonilla, Kristen A. Butela, Roy J. Coomans, Steven G. Cresawn, Tom D'Elia, Arturo Diaz, Ashley M. Divens, Nicholas P. Edgington, Gregory D. Frederick, Maria D. Gainey, Rebecca A. Garlena, Kenneth W. Grant, Susan M.R. Gurney, Heather L. Hendrickson, Lee E. Hughes, Margaret A. Kenna, Karen K. Klyczek, Hari Kotturi, Travis N. Mavrich, Angela L. Mckinney, Evan C. Merkhofer, Jordan Moberg Parker, Sally D. Molloy, Denise L. Monti, Dana A. Pape-Zambito

Articles

The bacteriophage population is vast, dynamic, old, and genetically diverse. The genomics of phages that infect bacterial hosts in the phylum Actinobacteria show them to not only be diverse but also pervasively mosaic, and replete with genes of unknown function. To further explore this broad group of bacteriophages, we describe here the isolation and genomic characterization of 116 phages that infect Microbacterium spp. Most of the phages are lytic, and can be grouped into twelve clusters according to their overall relatedness; seven of the phages are singletons with no close relatives. Genome sizes vary from 17.3 kbp to 97.7 kbp, …

Anti-Crispr Vs. Crispr: The Evolutionary Arms Race Between Microorganisms, Rachael M. St. Jacques

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

CRISPR arrays are a defense mechanism employed by bacteria against viral invaders. Cas proteins do the work in detecting, capturing, and integrating the viral DNA into the CRISPR array (Barrangou et al., 2007). Anti-CRISPR proteins are produced by phages, viruses that infect bacteria, to stop the bacterial host’s CRISPR-Cas complex from interrupting the phage life cycle (Bondy-Denomy, et al., 2015).

SEA-PHAGES is a course-based bacteriophage research network composed of 120 colleges and known at James Madison University as Viral Discovery. JMU uses the unsequenced Streptomyces griseus ATCC10137 as a host for bacteriophage discovery and propagation, and in this study we …

Bacteriophages: The Answer To Antibiotic Resistance?, Allie Casto, Adam Hurwitz, Kunny Kou, Gregory Mansour, Allison Mayzel, Rachel Policke, Alexander Schmidt, Rowan Shartel, Olivia Smith, Augustus Snyder, Allison Woolf

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, have numerous applications in the medical, agricultural, and research fields, especially as an alternative to antibiotics in the age of antibiotic resistance. Phages are able to lyse, or break apart, bacterial cells with fewer side effects, more specificity, and less likelihood of resistance than antibiotics. The acceptance of phages in medicine and agriculture around the world today is not universal, and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been slow to recognize phage therapy as a legitimate treatment. However, the successful use of phages in the past, as well as promising trial results …

A Tail Of Two Phages: Genomic And Functional Analysis Of Listeria Monocytogenes Phages Vb_Lmos_188 And Vb_Lmos_293 Reveal The Receptor-Binding Proteins Involved In Host Specificity, Aidan Casey, Kieran Jordan, Horst Neve, Aidan Coffey, Olivia Mcauliffe

Department of Biological Sciences Publications

The physical characteristics of bacteriophages establish them as viable candidates for downstream development of pathogen detection assays and biocontrol measures. To utilize phages for such purposes, a detailed knowledge of their host interaction mechanisms is a prerequisite. There is currently a wealth of knowledge available concerning Gram-negative phage-host interaction, but little by comparison for Gram-positive phages and Listeria phages in particular. In this research, the lytic spectrum of two recently isolated Listeria monocytogenes phages (vB_LmoS_188 and vB_LmoS_293) was determined, and the genomic basis for their observed serotype 4b/4e host-specificity was investigated using comparative genomics. The late tail genes of these …

Comparative Genomics Of Cluster O Mycobacteriophages, Steven G. Cresawn, Nathan S. Reyna, Ruth Plymale, Welkin H. Pope, Deborah Jacobs-Sera, Charles A. Bowman, Daniel A. Russell, Rebekah M. Dedrick, Tamarah Adair, Kirk R. Anders, Sarah Ball, David Bollivar, Caroline Breitenberger, Sandra H. Burnett, Kristen Butela, Deanna Byrnes, Sarah Carzo, Kathleen A. Cornely, Trevor Cross, Richard L. Daniels, David Dunbar, Ann M. Findley, Chris R. Gissendanner, Urszula P. Golebiewska, Grant A. Hartzog, J. Robert Hatherill, Lee E. Hughes, Chernoh S. Jalloh, Carla De Los Santos, Kevin Ekanem, Sphindile L. Khambule, Rodney A. King, Christina King-Smith, Karen Klyczek, Greg P. Krukonis

Articles

Mycobacteriophages - viruses of mycobacterial hosts - are genetically diverse but morphologically are all classified in the Caudovirales with double-stranded DNA and tails. We describe here a group of five closely related mycobacteriophages - Corndog, Catdawg, Dylan, Firecracker, and YungJamal - designated as Cluster O with long flexible tails but with unusual prolate capsids. Proteomic analysis of phage Corndog particles, Catdawg particles, and Corndog-infected cells confirms expression of half of the predicted gene products and indicates a non-canonical mechanism for translation of the Corndog tape measure protein. Bioinformatic analysis identifies 8-9 strongly predicted SigA promoters and all five Cluster O …