The Library
Coordinated transcriptional response to environmental stress by a Synechococcus virus
Tools
Rihtman, Branko, Torcello-Requena, Alberto, Mikhaylina, Alevtina, Puxty, Richard J., Clokie, Martha R. J., Millard, Andrew D. and Scanlan, David J. (2024) Coordinated transcriptional response to environmental stress by a Synechococcus virus. The ISME Journal . doi:10.1093/ismejo/wrae032 ISSN 1751-7362.
|
PDF
WRAP-Coordinated-transcriptional-environmental-stress-Synechococcus-virus-24.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1158Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wrae032
Abstract
Viruses are a major control on populations of microbes. Often, their virulence is examined in controlled laboratory conditions. Yet, in nature, environmental conditions lead to changes in host physiology and fitness that may impart both costs and benefits on viral success. Phosphorus (P) is a major abiotic control on the marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus. Some viruses infecting Synechococcus have acquired, from their host, a gene encoding a P substrate binding protein (PstS), thought to improve virus replication under phosphate starvation. Yet, pstS is uncommon amongst cyanobacterial viruses. Thus, we asked how infections with viruses lacking PstS are affected by P scarcity. We show that production of infectious virus particles of such viruses is reduced in low P conditions. However, this reduction in progeny is not caused by impaired phage genome replication, thought to be a major sink for cellular phosphate. Instead, transcriptomic analysis showed that under low P conditions a PstS-lacking cyanophage increased the expression of a specific gene set that included mazG, hli2, and gp43 encoding a pyrophosphatase, a high-light inducible proteinand DNA polymerase respectively. Moreover, several of the upregulated genes were controlled by the hosts phoBR two-component system. We hypothesise that recycling and polymerization of nucleotides liberates free phosphate and thus allows viral morphogenesis, albeit at lower rates than when phosphate is replete or when phages encode pstS. Together, our data shows how phage genomes, lacking obvious P-stress related genes, have evolved to exploit their host’s environmental sensing mechanisms to coordinate their own gene expression in response to resource limitation.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | Q Science > QR Microbiology | ||||||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) | ||||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Bacteriophages, Cyanobacteria, Phosphorus, Viruses | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | The ISME Journal | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 1751-7362 | ||||||||||||
Official Date: | 3 March 2024 | ||||||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1093/ismejo/wrae032 | ||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 4 March 2024 | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 4 March 2024 | ||||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year