A widespread family of polymorphic toxins encoded by temperate phages

BMC Biology

Research Article

Xavier Nassif¹  Alain Charbit¹  Mario Ramirez²  João André Carriço²  Bruno Ribeiro-Gonçalves²  Anne Jamet³  Marie Touchon⁴  Eduardo P. C. Rocha⁴ 

[1] Institut Necker Enfants-Malades, 14 rue Maria Helena Vieira Da Silva, 75014, Paris, France;Université Paris Descartes; Sorbonne Paris Cité, Faculté de Médecine, 75006, Paris, France;INSERM, U1151, Paris, France;CNRS UMR 8253, Paris, France;Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Instituto de Microbiologia, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-028, Lisboa, Portugal;Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Instituto de Microbiologia, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 1649-028, Lisboa, Portugal;Institut Necker Enfants-Malades, 14 rue Maria Helena Vieira Da Silva, 75014, Paris, France;Université Paris Descartes; Sorbonne Paris Cité, Faculté de Médecine, 75006, Paris, France;INSERM, U1151, Paris, France;CNRS UMR 8253, Paris, France;Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, 75015, Paris, France;CNRS, UMR 3525, 75015, Paris, France;

关键词: Bacterial genomics;    Phages;    Bacterial toxins;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12915-017-0415-1

 received in 2017-05-29, accepted in 2017-08-07,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPolymorphic toxins (PTs) are multi-domain bacterial exotoxins belonging to distinct families that share common features in terms of domain organization. PTs are found in all major bacterial clades, including many toxic effectors of type V and type VI secretion systems. PTs modulate the dynamics of microbial communities by killing or inhibiting the growth of bacterial competitors lacking protective immunity proteins.ResultsIn this work, we identified a novel widespread family of PTs, named MuF toxins, which were exclusively encoded within temperate phages and their prophages. By analyzing the predicted proteomes of 1845 bacteriophages and 2464 bacterial genomes, we found that MuF-containing proteins were frequently part of the DNA packaging module of tailed phages. Interestingly, MuF toxins were abundant in the human gut microbiome.ConclusionsOur results uncovered the presence of the MuF toxin family in the temperate phages of Firmicutes. The MuF toxin family is likely to play an important role in the ecology of the human microbiota where pathogens and commensal species belonging to the Firmicutes are abundant. We propose that MuF toxins could be delivered by phages into host bacteria and either influence the lysogeny decision or serve as bacterial weapons by inhibiting the growth of competing bacteria.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Jamet et al. 2017