Bacteriophage Adherence to Mucus Mediates Preventive Protection against Pathogenic Bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Metazoans were proposed to host bacteriophages on their mucosal surfaces in a symbiotic relationship, where phages provide an external immunity against bacterial infections and the metazoans provide phages a medium for interacting with bacteria. However, scarce empirical evidence and model systems have left the phage-mucus interaction poorly understood. Here, we show that phages bind both to porcine mucus and to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) primary mucus, persist up to 7 days in the mucosa, and provide protection against Flavobacterium columnare Also, exposure to mucus changes the bacterial phenotype by increasing bacterial virulence and susceptibility to phage infections. This trade-off in bacterial virulence reveals ecological benefit of maintaining phages in the met

SUBMITTER: Almeida GMF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6867891 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature