Ride the filament! – A hunting strategy of P. aeruginosa infecting phage JBD30 revealed by cryo-electron tomography
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic human pathogen that causes acute and chronic infections, which can lead to life threatening septic shock. Treatment of these infections is complicated by frequent antibiotic resistance of this bacterium. Here, we present bacteriophage JBD30 that infects P. aeruginosa and is a potential candidate for phage therapy. Using cryo-electron tomography we followed the infection of P. aeruginosa by bacteriophage JBD30 from attachment to the bacterial cell, to the cell lysis and production of new phage progeny. Bacteriophage JBD30 belongs to the family Siphoviridae. Its virion is composed of icosahedral head connected via dodecameric connector complex with long flexible non-contractile tail. JBD30 tail is terminated with a baseplate decorated with three long and three short tail fibres. Virions of bacteriophage JBD30 bind to P. aeruginosa type IV pili protruding from a bacterial cell pole in the close neighbourhood of a flagellum. Pili type IV are involved in twitching motility, adherence to the surfaces and biofilm formation. Bacteriophages JBD30 bind to pili (type IV) by their long tail fibres. Then they are pulled towards the cell surface by pili retraction, where they irreversibly bind with short tail fibers to their secondary receptor. Finally, the bacteriophages puncture the outer cellular membrane, degrade the peptidoglycan layer and inject their DNA into the host cell. Our results revealed the strategy that bacteriophage JBD30 uses to attack and infect bacterium P. aeruginosa. Combined with the information gained from our wet-lab experiments it enable us to propose the model of phage (JBD30) – bacterium (P. aeruginosa) interaction. |
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