Abstract

Doc number: 311

Abstract

Background: Stx bacteriophages are responsible for driving the dissemination of Stx toxin genes (stx ) across their bacterial host range. Lysogens carrying Stx phages can cause severe, life-threatening disease and Stx toxin is an integral virulence factor. The Stx-bacteriophage vB_EcoP-24B , commonly referred to as F24B, is capable of multiply infecting a single bacterial host cell at a high frequency, with secondary infection increasing the rate at which subsequent bacteriophage infections can occur. This is biologically unusual, therefore determining the genomic content and context of F24B compared to other lambdoid Stx phages is important to understanding the factors controlling this phenomenon and determining whether they occur in other Stx phages.

Results: The genome of the Stx2 encoding phage, F24B was sequenced and annotated. The genomic organisation and general features are similar to other sequenced Stx bacteriophages induced from Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), however F24B possesses significant regions of heterogeneity, with implications for phage biology and behaviour. The F24B genome was compared to other sequenced Stx phages and the archetypal lambdoid phage, lambda, using the Circos genome comparison tool and a PCR-based multi-loci comparison system.

Conclusions: The data support the hypothesis that Stx phages are mosaic, and recombination events between the host, phages and their remnants within the same infected bacterial cell will continue to drive the evolution of Stx phage variants and the subsequent dissemination of shigatoxigenic potential.

Details

Title
Comparative genomics of Shiga toxin encoding bacteriophages
Author
Smith, Darren L; Rooks, David J; Fogg, Paul CM; Darby, Alistair C; Thomson, Nick R; McCarthy, Alan J; Allison, Heather E
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712164
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1035596157
Copyright
© 2012 Smith et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.