Effects of the Newly Isolated T4-like Phage on Transmission of Plasmid-Borne Antibiotic Resistance Genes via Generalized Transduction

Autor: Junxuan Zhang, Xiaolu He, Shuqing Shen, Mengya Shi, Qin Zhou, Junlin Liu, Mianzhi Wang, Yongxue Sun
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Viruses, Vol 13, Iss 10, p 2070 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1999-4915
DOI: 10.3390/v13102070
Popis: Bacteriophages are the most abundant biological entities on earth and may play an important role in the transmission of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) from host bacteria. Although the specialized transduction mediated by the temperate phage targeting a specific insertion site is widely explored, the carrying characteristics of “transducing particles” for different ARG subtypes in the process of generalized transduction remains largely unclear. Here, we isolated a new T4-like lytic phage targeting transconjugant Escherichia coli C600 that contained plasmid pHNAH67 (KX246266) and encoded 11 different ARG subtypes. We found that phage AH67C600_Q9 can misload plasmid-borne ARGs and package host DNA randomly. Moreover, for any specific ARG subtype, the carrying frequency was negatively correlated with the multiplicity of infection (MOI). Further, whole genome sequencing (WGS) identified that only 0.338% (4/1183) of the contigs of an entire purified phage population contained ARG sequences; these were floR, sul2, aph(4)-Ia, and fosA. The low coverage indicated that long-read sequencing methods are needed to explore the mechanism of ARG transmission during generalized transduction.
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