Evolution along the parasitism-mutualism continuum determines the genetic repertoire of prophages.

ABSTRACT: Integrated into their bacterial hosts' genomes, prophage sequences exhibit a wide diversity of length and gene content, from highly degraded cryptic sequences to intact, functional prophages that retain a full complement of lytic-function genes. We apply three approaches-bioinformatics, analytical modelling and computational simulation-to understand the diverse gene content of prophages. In the bioinformatics work, we examine the distributions of over 50,000 annotated prophage genes identified in 1384 prophage sequences, comparing the gene repertoires of intact and incomplete prophages. These data indicate that genes involved in the replication, packaging, and release of phage particles have been preferentially lost in incomplete prophages, while tail fiber, transposase and integrase genes

SUBMITTER: Khan A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7744054 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature