Mutation-induced infections of phage-plasmids.

ABSTRACT: Phage-plasmids are extra-chromosomal elements that act both as plasmids and as phages, whose eco-evolutionary dynamics remain poorly constrained. Here, we show that segregational drift and loss-of-function mutations play key roles in the infection dynamics of a cosmopolitan phage-plasmid, allowing it to create continuous productive infections in a population of marine Roseobacter. Recurrent loss-of-function mutations in the phage repressor that controls prophage induction leads to constitutively lytic phage-plasmids that spread rapidly throughout the population. The entire phage-plasmid genome is packaged into virions, which were horizontally transferred by re-infecting lysogenized cells, leading to an increase in phage-plasmid copy number and to heterozygosity in a phage repressor locus i

SUBMITTER: Shan X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10090143 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature