Genomics and proteomics of mycobacteriophage patience, an accidental tourist in the Mycobacterium neighborhood.

ABSTRACT:

Unlabelled

Newly emerging human viruses such as Ebola virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, and HIV likely originate within an extant population of viruses in nonhuman hosts and acquire the ability to infect and cause disease in humans. Although several mechanisms preventing viral infection of particular hosts have been described, the mechanisms and constraints on viral host expansion are ill defined. We describe here mycobacteriophage Patience, a newly isolated phage recovered using Mycobacterium smegmatis mc(2)155 as a host. Patience has genomic features distinct from its M. smegmatis host, including a much lower GC content (50.3% versus 67.4%) and an abundance of codons that are rarely used in M. smegmatis. Nonetheless, it propagates well in M. smegmatis, and we

SUBMITTER: Pope WH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4324244 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature