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Updated: Jul 9, 2025

Phage-Mediated Genetic Manipulation of the Lyme Disease Spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi
Published on: September 28, 2022
Gene and domain shuffling in lytic cassettes of Enterococcus spp. bacteriophages
Jakub Viglasky1,2, Maria Piknova1, Peter Pristas1,3
1Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Srobarova 2, 041 54 Košice, Slovakia.
Abstract:
The genomes of Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium bacteriophages were analysed for gene shuffling in the lytic cassettes of bacteriophages infecting. It was found that enterococcal bacteriophages could be classified into well-defined groups based on the size of their genomes and each size group had its own conserved gene composition of lytic cassettes. Enterococcal bacteriophages use a relatively broad spectrum of holins and endolysins with variable cell-wall binding (CWB) and catalytic domains, and most of them utilise a lytic cassette with more than two genes. Enterococcal bacteriophages most commonly use endolysins with amidase catalytic domains and the CWB domain SH3_5. Some bacteriophages possess in their lytic cassette a holin-like gene with the XhlA domain protein, characteristic of hemolysin. Regardless of the shuffling of genes encoding holins and endolysins in lytic modules, a novel example of CWB domain shuffling within enterococcal endolysins was identified.
Supplementary Information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-023-03775-w.
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