Project description:Here, we investigated the impact of Stx2 phage carriage on Escherichia coli (E. coli) K-12 MG1655 host gene expression. Using quantitative RNA-seq analysis, we compared the transcriptome of naïve MG1655 and the lysogens carrying the Stx2 phage of the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak strain or of the E. coli O157:H7 strain PA8, which share high degree of sequence similarity.
Project description:After the attachment of the lytic phage T4 to Escherichia coli cells, 1% E. coli cells showed an approximately 40-fold increase in mutant frequency. They were designated as mutator A global transcriptome analysis using microarrays was conducted to determine the difference between parental strain and mutators, and the host responce after adsorption of the phage and the ghost.
Project description:Host acquisition by bacteriophages (phages) often entails modulation, appropriation, or inhibition of components and processes central to bacterial gene expression. Among these, small non‑coding RNAs (sRNAs) are major regulators of RNA fate and frequently rely on the conserved RNA chaperone Hfq to engage their cognate targets. Although phages are known to encode specialised proteins and sRNAs to manipulate host gene expression, it has remained unclear whether they also co‑opt host‑encoded sRNAs for their own gene regulatory needs. We show that transcriptome‑wide Hfq‑mediated RNA–RNA interactions are broadly destabilised during T2 phage infection of Escherichia coli. We further demonstrate that the conserved bacterial sRNA ArcZ is co-opted by T2 to promote expression of a conserved phage operon that includes a protein inhibiting a bacterial restriction–modification system. ArcZ achieves this by preventing RNase E–mediated degradation of the transcript originating from the phage operon. Our study provides the first evidence of an evolutionary strategy in which a phage leverages a nucleic acid host factor to fulfil its own gene expression requirements.
Project description:The purpose of this study is to determine whether the presence of pathogenic Escherichia coli in colon is associated with psychiatric disorders.
