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Updated: May 18, 2026

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Contribution of phage-derived genomic islands to the virulence of facultative bacterial pathogens
Ben Busby1, David M Kristensen, Eugene V Koonin
1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA. ben.busby@nih.gov
Abstract:
Facultative pathogens have extremely dynamic pan-genomes, to a large extent derived from bacteriophages and other mobile elements. We developed a simple approach to identify phage-derived genomic islands and apply it to show that pathogens from diverse bacterial genera are significantly enriched in clustered phage-derived genes compared with related benign strains. These findings show that genome expansion by integration of prophages containing virulence factors is a major route of evolution of facultative bacterial pathogens.
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