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PHAGE BIOLOGY

Phages keep bacteria awake

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 20, page 575 (2022)Cite this article

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Phages rely on the activity of their bacterial hosts to replicate, so dormancy and sporulation can negatively affect their survival. Schwartz, Lehmkuhl and Lennon thus hypothesized that phages might have developed ways to prevent dormancy. In the Bacillota, a phylum containing many spore-forming bacteria, dormancy is regulated by sigma factors. In support of their hypothesis, the authors found numerous homologues of sporulation-specific sigma factors in the genome of phages infecting this phylum. When they expressed some of these phage-derived sigma factors in Bacillus subtilis grown under spore formation-promoting conditions, fewer spores formed. These results confirm that phage-encoded sigma factors can disrupt regulation of dormancy and spore formation, although a fitness effect on the phages themselves remains to be tested.

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  1. Nature Reviews Microbiology http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/

    Ursula Hofer

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  1. Ursula Hofer
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Correspondence to Ursula Hofer.

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Hofer, U. Phages keep bacteria awake. Nat Rev Microbiol 20, 575 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00781-2

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