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Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Understanding the Impact of Temperate Bacteriophages on Their Lysogens Through Transcriptomics

Understanding the Impact of Temperate Bacteriophages on Their Lysogens Through Transcriptomics

Published on: January 5, 2024

Prophage maintenance is determined by environment-dependent selective sweeps rather than mutational availability.

Zachary M Bailey¹, Claudia Igler², Carolin C Wendling¹

¹Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.

Current Biology : CB

|April 10, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Prophages, or integrated viral DNA, persist in bacteria due to environmental conditions influencing their net benefit. Their maintenance depends on accessory genes and their sociality, not just mutation rates.

Keywords:

experimental evolution lysogeny prophage maintenance sequential evolution social resistance stochastic modeling temperate phages

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Last Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Understanding the Impact of Temperate Bacteriophages on Their Lysogens Through Transcriptomics

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Published on: January 5, 2024

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins

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Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

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Published on: February 3, 2023

Area of Science:

Microbial Evolution
Genomics
Bacteriophage Biology

Background:

Prophages are integrated viral sequences in bacterial genomes with both benefits and costs.
Despite risks like bacterial death upon activation, prophages are common, but the reasons for their maintenance are unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the selective forces maintaining prophages in bacterial populations.
To understand how environmental conditions and prophage-encoded genes influence prophage dynamics.

Main Methods:

Experimental evolution combined with stochastic modeling.
Simulations to analyze prophage maintenance under varying conditions.

Main Results:

Prophage maintenance is primarily driven by environmental conditions altering their net fitness effect.
Conflicting selection pressures and the sociality of accessory genes significantly impact prophage persistence.
Environmental variation is a more significant factor than mutation rates in prophage maintenance.

Conclusions:

Environmental factors and gene sociality are key determinants of prophage dynamics in bacterial populations.
Findings challenge the role of random chance versus environmental influence in bacterial evolution.
The study advances understanding of microbial evolution and diversification under environmental change.