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Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo

The rise of next generation sequencing is revealing a hidden diversity of temperate phages within the microbial community. While a handful of these phages have been well characterized, for the vast majority, the role of phage carriage, and especially multiple phage carriage, is poorly understood. Th...

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Autores principales: Burns, Nicola, James, Chloe E, Harrison, Ellie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408145/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25926879
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12243
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author Burns, Nicola
James, Chloe E
Harrison, Ellie
author_facet Burns, Nicola
James, Chloe E
Harrison, Ellie
author_sort Burns, Nicola
collection PubMed
description The rise of next generation sequencing is revealing a hidden diversity of temperate phages within the microbial community. While a handful of these phages have been well characterized, for the vast majority, the role of phage carriage, and especially multiple phage carriage, is poorly understood. The Liverpool epidemic strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an aggressive pathogen in cystic fibrosis lung infections that has recently been found to contain several unique prophages within its genome. Here, we experimentally investigate the role of two of these phages in vivo, using an insect model of infection. We find that while no benefit is conferred by phage carriage in single bacterial infections, phages confer a large fitness advantage during mixed infections by mediating bacteria–bacteria competition. Differences between the two phages appeared to be associated with the rate at which the competitor acquired the phage, and therefore resistance. However, the advantage was greatest in the polylysogen, carrying both phages. These findings suggest that the LES phages may play an important role in host invasions and more generally show that the carriage of multiple phages may itself be beneficial by hindering the spread of resistance in rival bacterial populations.
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spelling pubmed-44081452015-04-29 Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo Burns, Nicola James, Chloe E Harrison, Ellie Evol Appl Original Articles The rise of next generation sequencing is revealing a hidden diversity of temperate phages within the microbial community. While a handful of these phages have been well characterized, for the vast majority, the role of phage carriage, and especially multiple phage carriage, is poorly understood. The Liverpool epidemic strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an aggressive pathogen in cystic fibrosis lung infections that has recently been found to contain several unique prophages within its genome. Here, we experimentally investigate the role of two of these phages in vivo, using an insect model of infection. We find that while no benefit is conferred by phage carriage in single bacterial infections, phages confer a large fitness advantage during mixed infections by mediating bacteria–bacteria competition. Differences between the two phages appeared to be associated with the rate at which the competitor acquired the phage, and therefore resistance. However, the advantage was greatest in the polylysogen, carrying both phages. These findings suggest that the LES phages may play an important role in host invasions and more generally show that the carriage of multiple phages may itself be beneficial by hindering the spread of resistance in rival bacterial populations. BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015-04 2015-02-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4408145/ /pubmed/25926879 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12243 Text en © 2014 The Authors. Evolutionary Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Burns, Nicola
James, Chloe E
Harrison, Ellie
Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title_full Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title_fullStr Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title_full_unstemmed Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title_short Polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
title_sort polylysogeny magnifies competitiveness of a bacterial pathogen in vivo
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408145/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25926879
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12243
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