Transduction by phage is a useful technique in bacterial genetic engineering. It is usually done between certain strains within the same bacteria species. What is the rule for choosing donor bacteria and recipient bacteria? It is possible for any two strains of the same species or even within a genus? How close the phylogenetic relationship should be to enable a successful transduction between donor bacteria and recipient bacteria?
This depends on the organism you are working with. To transfer DNA via transduction, lytic phages are used.
1) The bacteriophages are Genus specific. Only in cases of some genus of bacteria, there can be inter-species transduction (e.g. Streptococcus, Pseudomonas,etc) . But, for most of the cases, transducing phage is super specific to not only species but for strains as well (under laboratory conditions, what happens in the natural ecological niche of that bacteria may be different, due to certain unknown phage activities).
2) For example, in E.coli, P1 phage is used for transduction in K strains; but, P1 phage does not work (90% of the times) in E. coli B strains.
3) Even if two strains/species of same genus of bacteria are phylogenetically close, that does not guarantee transduction mediated DNA transfer. But, one can try these experiments.
4) There are three very important things that should be considered: a) More than similarity in genome sequence, membrane structure and properties (especially the receptor to which a certain bacteriophage binds during infection is important, that receptor must be common between donor and recipient bacteria) are more important. b) Most of the times, the differences between restriction-modification system (R-M) become the major contributing factor in the incompatibility of two bacteria as donor and acceptor. If the R-M system is very similar, then probability of successful transduction become much higher. c) Translation of proteins can be a big problem for the phage. I will explain. If a bacteriophage is specific to a certain species of bacteria, then the genome of the phage has evolved to use the translation machinery of that bacteria. So, the codons are optimized (especially RARE CODONS). IF the codon usage is very different between two bacteria, then most likely phage specific for the one bacteria can not be used for other species of bacteria.
But, the final answer to all your questions is: try that experiment in varying conditions...... Cheers, have fun...I am having fun ( not really) in transduction experiments for the last 6 years....:D
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Molecular Biology