Proteomic Analysis of a Novel Bacillus Jumbo Phage Revealing Glycoside Hydrolase As Structural Component

Tailed phages with genomes of larger than 200 kbp are classified as Jumbo phages and exhibited extremely high uncharted diversity. The genomic annotation of Jumbo phage is often disappointing because most of the predicted proteins, including structural proteins, failed to make good hits to the sequences in the databases. In this study, 23 proteins of a novel Bacillus Jumbo phage, vB_BpuM_BpSp, were identified as phage structural proteins by the structural proteome analysis, including 14 proteins of unknown function, 5 proteins with predicted function as structural proteins, a glycoside hydrolase, a Holliday junction resolvase, a RNA-polymerase β-subunit, and a host-coding portal protein, which might be hijacked from the host strain during phage virion assembly. The glycoside hydrolase (Gp255) was identified as phage virion component and was found to interact with the phage baseplate protein. Gp255 shows specific lytic activity against the phage host strain GR8 and has high temperature tolerance. In situ peptidoglycan-hydrolyzing activities analysis revealed that the expressed Gp255 and phage structural proteome exhibited glycoside hydrolysis activity against the tested GR8 cell extracts. This study identified the first functional individual structural glycoside hydrolase in phage virion. The presence of activated glycoside hydrolase in phage virions might facilitate the injection of the phage genome during infection by forming pores on the bacterial cell wall.