Dear all
I wonder if in any circumstance, strictly virulent bacteriophages can incorporate to the host genome?
I understand there is a concept of psuedolysogeny where the virulent phage DNA pauses to replicate in unfavourable conditions like starved host, but this situation can be reversed by switching to a nutrient-rich environment and the viral genome never incorporates to the host genome like temperate phages.
Is it possible for the strictly virulent phages to incorporate to the host chromosome? And how frequent will that be? I wonder if anyone has observed this, because I couldn't find any paper about this, please help.
I can say only about evidence of old incorporation of lytic phages into bacterial genomes:
Krupovič M, Bamford DH. Putative prophages related to lytic tailless marine dsDNA phage PM2 are widespread in the genomes of aquatic bacteria. BMC genomics. 2007 Dec;8(1):236.
Jarvis AW. DNA-DNA homology between lactic streptococci and their temperate and lytic phages. Appl. Environ. Microbiol.. 1984 May 1;47(5):1031-8.
and some other publications...
Here You have some papers about pseudolysogeny and some evidence about ancient integration of PM2-like viruses, but remember this is a tail-less bacteriophage.
Article Pseudolysogeny
Article Phage–host interactions during pseudolysogeny: Lessons from ...
Article Putative prophages related to lytic tailless marine dsDNA ph...
Article Diversity of phage infection types and associated terminolog...
I guess that phages that can incorporate in the host genome should not be called "strictly virulent" ;)
We have observed a 'switch' between lytic and lysogenic cycles in a Pseudomonas phage but a strictly virulent phage will never get it's DNA integrated into the host genome.
Jean-Paul Pirnay What is about lytic phages at suboptimal temperature? Canadian colleagues said that such phage in Erwinia amylovora can stay in low temperature for long time without lysis , increasing chance for integration into bacterial genome (in theory).
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