Hi Eric! Great presentation. I am wondering what impact the shortened genome has on phage Enceladus besides its alternate morphology? What specific gene functions are lost as a result of the lateral transfer? Thank you so much!
Hi Cornelia, the only information we know right now is that it does indeed affect the morphology. We can’t be sure of what gene functions have been lost through deletion because we have not been able to do gene knockout on the missing genes that were in the other L1 phages. We also do not know what functions have been gained by the other L1 phages without gene knockout.
Based on the information from Phamerator that a few of the genes are not in many clusters we believe when would go to knock those genes out they would not impact the functionality of the phage, indicating they have a minor function, no function, or do not have a high enough coding potential to make an impact on the phages.
It turns out that horizontal gene transfer is a fairly common practice for phages to undergo. We were a little surprised to see that the L1 phage cluster was the only group we looked at with a phage significantly shorter.
Because it is so different from the other clusters, do you predict that genomes from other clusters will eventually adapt similiar genetic mechanisms as enceladus? In other words, could there be a specific pattern of genome evolution within phages?
I would personally think there is probably another phage cluster out there that is like the L1 cluster in regards with a phage that is significantly shorter than all the others, but we can’t make this assumption without examining more clusters.
We do not believe this phage is missing anything crucial because the phage is would not be functional if anything crucial was missing and this phage did infect bacteria in the MCDB 1161 class.
The original hypothesis for the WhiB part was that the protein would function similarly to the way it does in bacteria and for the length part my original hypothesis was that it was mainly deletions, but we later learned how common HGTs are.
Hi Eric! Great presentation. I am wondering what impact the shortened genome has on phage Enceladus besides its alternate morphology? What specific gene functions are lost as a result of the lateral transfer? Thank you so much!
Hi Cornelia, the only information we know right now is that it does indeed affect the morphology. We can’t be sure of what gene functions have been lost through deletion because we have not been able to do gene knockout on the missing genes that were in the other L1 phages. We also do not know what functions have been gained by the other L1 phages without gene knockout.
Nice job! Do you have any guesses on the role of genes you want to knock out?
Based on the information from Phamerator that a few of the genes are not in many clusters we believe when would go to knock those genes out they would not impact the functionality of the phage, indicating they have a minor function, no function, or do not have a high enough coding potential to make an impact on the phages.
How common are such gene transfers in phages, and were you surprised by your results?
It turns out that horizontal gene transfer is a fairly common practice for phages to undergo. We were a little surprised to see that the L1 phage cluster was the only group we looked at with a phage significantly shorter.
Because it is so different from the other clusters, do you predict that genomes from other clusters will eventually adapt similiar genetic mechanisms as enceladus? In other words, could there be a specific pattern of genome evolution within phages?
I would personally think there is probably another phage cluster out there that is like the L1 cluster in regards with a phage that is significantly shorter than all the others, but we can’t make this assumption without examining more clusters.
Great presentation! If deletions were the cause of the length difference of your phage, is this phage missing any crucial DNA segments/genes?
We do not believe this phage is missing anything crucial because the phage is would not be functional if anything crucial was missing and this phage did infect bacteria in the MCDB 1161 class.
What exactly was your original hypothesis?
The original hypothesis for the WhiB part was that the protein would function similarly to the way it does in bacteria and for the length part my original hypothesis was that it was mainly deletions, but we later learned how common HGTs are.