Evolutionary genomics of APSE: a tailed phage that lysogenically converts the bacterium Hamiltonella defensa into a heritable protective symbiont of aphids.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Most phages infect free-living bacteria but a few have been identified that infect heritable symbionts of insects or other eukaryotes. Heritable symbionts are usually specialized and isolated from other bacteria with little known about the origins of associated phages. Hamiltonella defensa is a heritable bacterial symbiont of aphids that is usually infected by a tailed, double-stranded DNA phage named APSE.

Methods

We conducted comparative genomic and phylogenetic studies to determine how APSE is related to other phages and prophages.

Results

Each APSE genome was organized into four modules and two predicted functional units. Gene content and order were near-fully conserved in modules 1 and 2, which encode predicted DNA metabolism genes, and module 4, which

SUBMITTER: Boyd BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8579659 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature