Phage Transmission Strategies

Billions of years of co-evolution have led to utterly intricate interactions between phages and their bacterial hosts. While both the (short-term) intracellular molecular host-subversion mechanisms during a phage infection cycle and the (long-term) mutational red queen dynamics among phages and host cells have traditionally received a lot of attention, there has been an underestimating neglect of (mid-term) transmission strategies elaborated by phages and serving their spread through or even co-existence with the host population. However, recent findings (including published and unpublished findings of our group) strongly suggest that such strategies exist, have genetic underpinnings, and could differ from phage to phage. Focusing on different (lytic and temperate) Salmonella-phages and making use of time-lapse fluorescence microscopy coupled to infected populations in batch and continuous bioreactors/chemostats, we aim to further study and reveal non-canonical phage-host associations and the phage transmission strategies they support.

Keywords:Cell biology, Bioreactor, Chemostat, Population dynamics, Salmonella Typhimurium

Disciplines:Bacteriology, Virology