| Autor: |
Mancini, Kayla, Cao, Ivy, Ge, Carol, Mu, Emily, Zhu, Richard, Mathur, Vinayak |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
Bios; Jun2024, Vol. 95 Issue 2, p73-78, 6p |
| Abstrakt: |
Bacteriophages are the most abundant biological agent on earth and infect bacteria in order to replicate. During this cycle of infection, there is opportunity for phage-mediated transduction that leads to Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), which could lead to increased rate of evolution or virulence in a short time. Strains of the highly virulent Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria were analyzed for the presence of virulence factors (VFs) acquired through phage-mediated HGT. We analyzed bioinformatic data using BLAST, MEGA, and VFDB to look at the VFs of S. pyogenes strains and investigate the extent of HGT occurring among these emerging virulent bacteria. We found that strains with positive HGT contained phage-associated VFs which are absent in the non-HGT strains. Pattern of phylogenetic relatedness of the HGT strains indicates that the HGT may have occurred independently in the strains. Synteny analysis showed a pattern of randomness in the arrangement of genetic elements in the HGT strains, which could be due to the acquisition and retention of phage-associated genes influencing the fitness/virulence of these strains. We want to further this research to investigate how prevalent phage-mediated HGT is in related species and how it is contributing to increasing bacterial virulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Databáze: |
Complementary Index |
| Externí odkaz: |
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