Putative plasmid prophages of Bacillus cereus sensu lato may hold the key to undiscovered phage diversity.

ABSTRACT: Bacteriophages are bacterial viruses and the most abundant biological entities on Earth. Temperate bacteriophages can form prophages stably maintained in the host population: they either integrate into the host genome or replicate as plasmids in the host cytoplasm. As shown, tailed temperate bacteriophages may form circular plasmid prophages in many bacterial species of the taxa Firmicutes, Gammaproteobacteria and Spirochaetes. The actual number of such prophages is thought to be underestimated for two main reasons: first, in bacterial whole genome-sequencing assemblies, they are difficult to distinguish from actual plasmids; second, there is an absence of experimental studies which are vital to confirm their existence. In Firmicutes, such prophages appear to be especially numerous. In the

SUBMITTER: Piligrimova EG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8026635 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature