A Cryptic Non-Inducible Prophage Confers Phage-Immunity on the Streptococcus thermophilus M17PTZA496.

ABSTRACT: Streptococcus thermophilus is considered one of the most important species for the dairy industry. Due to their diffusion in dairy environments, bacteriophages can represent a threat to this widely used bacterial species. Despite the presence of a CRISPR-Cas system in the S. thermophilus genome, some lysogenic strains harbor cryptic prophages that can increase the phage-host resistance defense. This characteristic was identified in the dairy strain S. thermophilus M17PTZA496, which contains two integrated prophages 51.8 and 28.3 Kb long, respectively. In the present study, defense mechanisms, such as a lipoprotein-encoding gene and Siphovirus Gp157, the last associated to the presence of a noncoding viral DNA element, were identified in the prophage M17PTZA496 genome. The ability to overex

SUBMITTER: da Silva Duarte V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6356513 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature