Taxonomy-aware, sequence similarity ranking reliably predicts phage-host relationships.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Characterizing phage-host interactions is critical to understanding the ecological role of both partners and effective isolation of phage therapeuticals. Unfortunately, experimental methods for studying these interactions are markedly slow, low-throughput, and unsuitable for phages or hosts difficult to maintain in laboratory conditions. Therefore, a number of in silico methods emerged to predict prokaryotic hosts based on viral sequences. One of the leading approaches is the application of the BLAST tool that searches for local similarities between viral and microbial genomes. However, this prediction method has three major limitations: (i) top-scoring sequences do not always point to the actual host; (ii) mosaic virus genomes may match to many, typically related, bacte

SUBMITTER: Zielezinski A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8501573 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature