RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 What the book of Lambda didn’t tell us about lysogens from natural populations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.05.11.491505
DO 10.1101/2022.05.11.491505
A1 Brandon Berryhill
A1 Rodrigo Garcia
A1 Ingrid C. McCall
A1 Waqas Chaudhry
A1 Marie-Agnès Petit
A1 Bruce Levin
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/11/2022.05.11.491505.abstract
AB Fundamental to the ecology of bacteria are bacteriophages (phages), a major source of bacterial mortality. Functionally, bacteria are protected from these viruses through resistance, where they are refractory, and immunity, where the phages infect but do not replicate. Immunity is the mechanism by which lysogenic bacteria are protected from temperate phage infections. This is what we know from studies of lysogens in the laboratory, but what about the real world? We address this question with mathematical models and experiments using Escherichia coli, λ-phage, and naturally occurring E. coli lysogens. Our study demonstrates that naturally occurring lysogens are resistant (refractory) to the phage coded by their prophage. We therefore postulate that lysogenic bacteria are likely resistant rather than only immune to temperate phages.One-Sentence Summary Naturally occurring lysogens are likely to be resistant, and not only immune, to bacteriophages encoded by their prophage.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.