A Vibrio cholerae viral satellite maximizes its spread and inhibits phage by remodeling hijacked phage coat proteins into small capsids.

ABSTRACT: Phage satellites commonly remodel capsids they hijack from the phages they parasitize, but only a few mechanisms regulating the change in capsid size have been reported. Here, we investigated how a satellite from Vibrio cholerae, phage-inducible chromosomal island-like element (PLE), remodels the capsid it has been predicted to steal from the phage ICP1 (Netter et al., 2021). We identified that a PLE-encoded protein, TcaP, is both necessary and sufficient to form small capsids during ICP1 infection. Interestingly, we found that PLE is dependent on small capsids for efficient transduction of its genome, making it the first satellite to have this requirement. ICP1 isolates that escaped TcaP-mediated remodeling acquired substitutions in the coat protein, suggesting an interaction betwe

SUBMITTER: Boyd CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10945586 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature