Phylogenetic relationships and codon usage bias amongst cluster K mycobacteriophages.

ABSTRACT: Bacteriophages infecting pathogenic hosts play an important role in medical research, not only as potential treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections but also offering novel insights into pathogen genetics and evolution. A prominent example is cluster K mycobacteriophages infecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a causative agent of tuberculosis in humans. However, as handling M. tuberculosis as well as other pathogens in a laboratory remains challenging, alternative nonpathogenic relatives, such as Mycobacterium smegmatis, are frequently used as surrogates to discover therapeutically relevant bacteriophages in a safer environment. Consequently, the individual host ranges of the majority of cluster K mycobacteriophages identified to date remain poorly understood. Here, we characterized t

SUBMITTER: Crane A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8527509 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature