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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Comparative genomics of the mycobacteriophages: insights into bacteriophage evolution
Graham F Hatfull1, Steven G Cresawn, Roger W Hendrix
1Department of Biological Sciences and Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. gfh@pitt.edu
Abstract:
The recognition of the vast numbers of bacteriophages in the biosphere has prompted a renewal of interest in understanding their morphological and genetic diversity, and elucidating the evolutionary mechanisms that give rise to them. We have approached these questions by isolating and characterizing a collection of mycobacteriophages that infect a common bacterial host, Mycobacterium smegmatis. Comparative genomic analysis of 50 mycobacteriophages shows that they are highly diverse, although not uniformly so, that they are pervasively mosaic with a multitude of single gene modules, and that this mosaicism is generated through illegitimate recombination.
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