Abigail A Howell, Cyril J Versoza, Gabriella Cerna, Tyler Johnston, Shriya Kakde, Keith Karuku, Maria Kowal, Jasmine Monahan, Jillian Murray, Teresa Nguyen, Aurely Sanchez Carreon, Abigail Streiff, Blake Su, Faith Youkhana, Saige Munig, Zeel Patel, Minerva So, Makena Sy, Sarah Weiss, Susanne P Pfeifer
Bacteriophages, infecting bacterial hosts in every environment on our planet, are a driver of adaptive evolution in bacterial communities. At the same time, the host range of many bacteriophages-and thus one of the selective pressures acting on complex microbial systems in nature-remains poorly characterized. Here, we computationally inferred the putative host ranges of 40 cluster P mycobacteriophages, including members from six sub-clusters (P1-P6). A series of comparative genomic analyses revealed that mycobacteriophages of sub-cluster P1 are restricted to the Mycobacterium genus, whereas mycobacteriophages of sub-clusters P2 to P6 are likely also able to infect other genera, several of which are commonly associated with human disease...
September 12, 2022: G3: Genes—Genomes—Genetics