Dataset Information

Prophages and Past Prophage-Host Interactions Revealed by CRISPR Spacer Content in a Fish Pathogen.

ABSTRACT: The role of prophages in the evolution, diversification, or virulence of the fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare has not been studied thus far. Here, we describe a functional spontaneously inducing prophage fF4 from the F. columnare type strain ATCC 23463, which is not detectable with commonly used prophage search methods. We show that this prophage type has a global distribution and is present in strains isolated from Finland, Thailand, Japan, and North America. The virions of fF4 are myoviruses with contractile tails and infect only bacterial strains originating from Northern Finland. The fF4 resembles transposable phages by similar genome organization and several gene orthologs. Additional bioinformatic analyses reveal several species in the phylum Bacteroidetes that host a similar type of putative prophage, including bacteria that are important animal and human pathogens. Furthermore, a survey of F. columnare Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) spacers indicate a shared evolutionary history between F. columnare strains and the fF4 phage, and another putative prophage in the F. columnare strain ATCC 49512, named p49512. First, CRISPR spacer content from the two CRISPR loci (types II-C and VI-B) of the fF4 lysogen F. columnare ATCC 23463 revealed a phage terminase protein-matching spacer in the VI-B locus. This spacer is also present in two Chinese F. columnare strains. Second, CRISPR analysis revealed four F. columnare strains that contain unique spacers targeting different regions of the putative prophage p49512 in the F. columnare strain ATCC 49512, despite the geographical distance or genomovar of the different strains. This suggests a common ancestry for the F. columnare prophages and different host strains.

SUBMITTER: Laanto E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7761591 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Prophages and Past Prophage-Host Interactions Revealed by CRISPR Spacer Content in a Fish Pathogen.

Laanto Elina E Ravantti Janne J JJ Sundberg Lotta-Riina LR

Microorganisms 20201202 12

The role of prophages in the evolution, diversification, or virulence of the fish pathogen <i>Flavobacterium columnare</i> has not been studied thus far. Here, we describe a functional spontaneously inducing prophage fF4 from the <i>F. columnare</i> type strain ATCC 23463, which is not detectable with commonly used prophage search methods. We show that this prophage type has a global distribution and is present in strains isolated from Finland, Thailand, Japan, and North America. The virions of ...[more]

PMID: 33276599

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundThe CRISPR/Cas system is known to act as an adaptive and heritable immune system in Eubacteria and Archaea. Immunity is encoded in an array of spacer sequences. Each spacer can provide specific immunity to invasive elements that carry the same or a similar sequence. Even in closely related strains, spacer content is very dynamic and evolves quickly. Standard models of nucleotide evolution cannot be applied to quantify its rate of change since processes other than single nucleotide changes determine its evolution.MethodsWe present probabilistic models that are specific for spacer content evolution. They account for the different processes of insertion and deletion. Insertions can be constrained to occur on one end only or are allowed to occur throughout the array. One deletion event can affect one spacer or a whole fragment of adjacent spacers. Parameters of the underlying models are estimated for a pair of arrays by maximum likelihood using explicit ancestor enumeration.ResultsSimulations show that parameters are well estimated on average under the models presented here. There is a bias in the rate estimation when including fragment deletions. The models also estimate times between pairs of strains. But with increasing time, spacer overlap goes to zero, and thus there is an upper bound on the distance that can be estimated. Spacer content similarities are displayed in a distance based phylogeny using the estimated times.We use the presented models to analyze different Yersinia pestis data sets and find that the results among them are largely congruent. The models also capture the variation in diversity of spacers among the data sets. A comparison of spacer-based phylogenies and Cas gene phylogenies shows that they resolve very different time scales for this data set.ConclusionsThe simulations and data analyses show that the presented models are useful for quantifying spacer content evolution and for displaying spacer content similarities of closely related strains in a phylogeny. This allows for comparisons of different CRISPR arrays or for comparisons between CRISPR arrays and nucleotide substitution rates.

Project description:Campylobacter jejuni carry temperate bacteriophages that can affect the biology or virulence of the host bacterium. Known effects include genomic rearrangements and resistance to DNA transformation. C. jejuni prophage CJIE1 shows sequence variability and variability in the content of morons. Homologs of the CJIE1 prophage enhance both adherence and invasion to cells in culture and increase the expression of a specific subset of bacterial genes. Other C. jejuni temperate phages have so far not been well characterized. In this study we describe investigations into the DNA sequence variability and protein expression in a second prophage, CJIE4. CJIE4 sequences were obtained de novo from DNA sequencing of five C. jejuni isolates, as well as from whole genome sequences submitted to GenBank by other research groups. These CJIE4 DNA sequences were heterogenous, with several different insertions/deletions (indels) in different parts of the prophage genome. Two variants of a 3-4 kb region inserted within CJIE4 had different gene content that distinguished two major conserved CJIE4 prophage families. Additional indels were detected throughout the prophage. Detection of proteins in the five isolates characterized in our laboratory in isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation (iTRAQ) experiments indicated that prophage proteins within each of the two large indel variants were expressed during growth of the bacteria on Mueller Hinton agar plates. These proteins included the extracellular DNase associated with resistance to DNA transformation and prophage repressor proteins. Other proteins associated with known or suspected roles in prophage biology were also expressed from CJIE4, including capsid protein, the phage integrase, and MazF, a type II toxin-antitoxin system protein. Together with the results previously obtained for the CJIE1 prophage these results demonstrate that sequence variability and expression of moron genes are both general properties of temperate bacteriophages in C. jejuni.

Dataset Information

Prophages and Past Prophage-Host Interactions Revealed by CRISPR Spacer Content in a Fish Pathogen.

Publications

Prophages and Past Prophage-Host Interactions Revealed by CRISPR Spacer Content in a Fish Pathogen.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets