Ayooshi Mitra, Amity University, Kolkata
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming a greater threat to human health day by day, necessitating the development of new antibiotics. Bacteriophages and their potential as antibacterial agents to combat pathogenic bacteria have sparked renewed interest. This is largely due to the phage’s ability to cause a cellular breakdown in the bacterial host via its ‘lysis genes.’ Most phages can rupture their host cell, a process known as lysis, wherein they release new phage virions known as “progeny” that are genetically and structurally identical to the parent virus.
Small phages produce a single protein that causes host lysis. Essentially, the virus produces a protein antibiotic that causes lysis in the same way that antibiotics like penicillin do – by interfering with the multistage process of cell wall biosynthesis. When an infected cell attempts to divide, it explodes because it is unable to form a new cell wall between the daughter cells. In a recent study conducted by researchers of Texas A&M University, it is said that the researchers believe that these small lysis proteins could serve as a model for a whole new class of antibiotics. The research points to the lysis of leviviruses, which are bacteriophages with single-stranded RNA genomes having three to four genes. There have been tens of thousands of leviviruses discovered. Sgl, which stands for “single gene lysis,” is one of the known levivirus genes. Sgl is a gene that produces a protein that causes bacteria to break down their cells. Sgl genes are found in many leviviruses, but they have remained “hidden” from researchers because they are small, diverse, and can be embedded within other genes.
The researchers said in an interview, that they wanted to discover these “hidden” genes and understand their structure and evolution so they can understand how these will be able to benefit the development of novel antibiotics. the researchers could recognise 35 different Sgls that had lytic or negative effects on E. coli bacteria. The researchers also discovered that each of these Sgls could represent a different mechanism for the lysis of host cells. According to previous research, single-stranded RNA phages have high mutation rates. These phages can infect new bacteria species thanks to their high mutation rates. The phages must either change the existing Sgl gene or evolve a new Sgl to escape the new hosts. Even though genomic RNA has a very short total length, these phages can encode two or more Sgls or proto-Sgls for lytic activity against multiple bacterial hosts.
The discovery that a large proportion of the Sgls found in the study originated and evolved within the gene for the phage replication protein, or Rep, was another far-reaching aspect of the research. Finally, according to the findings, Sgls are extremely diverse and have yet to be fully exploited as a source of peptides that could be used in protein antibiotics to attack bacteria’s cellular function. The researchers hope that their findings will aid in the discovery of small genes and their biological functions in RNA viruses found in more complex organisms like plants and animals and provide a model for studying the evolution of new genes.
Also read:An E-textile that controls biological energy when worn
Reference:
- “Rapid de novo evolution of lysis genes in single-stranded RNA phages” by Karthik R. Chamakura, Jennifer S. Tran, Chandler O’Leary, Hannah G. Lisciandro, Sophia F. Antillon, Kameron D. Garza, Elizabeth Tran, Lorna Min and Ry Young, 26 November 2020, Nature Communications.DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19860-0
- https://scitechdaily.com/hidden-genes-in-bacteriophages-could-be-key-in-development-of-new-antibiotics/amp/
One thought on “SGL: Hidden part in Bacteriophages could be a Protein Antibiotic”