•  
  •  
 

Proposal

Bacteriophage, a type of virus that infects bacteria, was discovered 100 years ago, initially isolated with a plaque assay in the 1940s. A mycobacteriophage is a subtype of bacteriophage that specifically infects mycobacteria. Since the introduction of DNA technologies and efforts to identify a plethora of bacteriophages, over 10,000 bacteriophages have been identified with 1,500 sequenced. Bacteriophage discovery has aided in genetic editing techniques, the development of synthetic biology tools, and disease treatment. However, to be able to expand on these capabilities, there is a need to identify more bacteriophages and sequence the genomes of these viruses, as they outnumber bacteria 10 to 1. The mycobacteriophage PurduePete was discovered in 2022 and annotated using the gene sequence annotation programs DNA Master, PhagesDB BLAST, and NCBI BLAST to discover the functions of its genome. Several encoded gene products were discovered in PurduePete that are part of larger, biologically significant, protein families present in eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and other bacteriophage suggesting possible conservation and homology in PurduePete. This includes the functions of helix-turn-helix DNA binding protein in the base pair (bp) region 17644 to 17947, histidine triad protein (HIT) in the bp region 6280 to 6858, and a RusA-like Holliday junction resolvase in the bp region 121254–121709 bp of PurduePete. Developing a greater understanding of shared gene products between bacteriophages and eukaryotes will be integral in creating bacteriophage-based technologies that support already existing eukaryotic functions. The aforementioned proteins are all therapeutically significant, spanning areas of oncology and cardiology. These protein functions present in bacteriophages could be scaled and utilized in the development of novel therapeutics and provide a framework to investigate their broader functions.

Download

Share

COinS