463: Selectively Stimulating Cell Squatters

This episode: Bacteria produce a compound that causes a phage
lurking in the genome of a competing species to wake up and start
killing that competitor!


Download Episode (8.2 MB, 12.0 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Zaire ebolavirus


 


News item

 



Takeaways




Some bacteriophages infect and immediately destroy their
hosts in a burst of new viruses, while others can be
stealthier, integrating their genome into the genome of
the host and remaining there quietly even over multiple
generations of the bacteria. When something stresses the
host, such as DNA damage, these integrated phages
(prophages) become active and start producing new
viruses, killing their host like the other kind does.


 


In this study, one kind of bacteria release a chemical
that wakes up phages in a competitor species of bacteria.
This is helpful for competition, but even more
interesting is that out of the six prophages in the
competitor species, the chemical wakes up only one of
them. Such selective phage induction could be interesting
to study.



 
Journal Paper:
Jancheva M, Böttcher T. 2021. A Metabolite of Pseudomonas
Triggers Prophage-Selective Lysogenic to Lytic Conversion in
Staphylococcus aureus. J Am Chem Soc 143:8344–8351.




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com. Thanks for listening!


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