Abstract 1576 Discovery of Toxic Genes in Mycobacterium Smegmatis of Phage Lebron Through Molecular Cloning and Phenotypic Assays

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Bacteriophages (phage) are viruses that infect bacteria. They are highly diverse and the most abundant organisms on the Earth, known to be present in every environment. Phage research has produced a deeper understanding of microbiology and virology amongst other general scientific applications such as the CRISPR-Cas system and phage therapy. As the number of isolated, sequenced, and annotated phage genomes grows, so does the number of genes that encode for previously uncharacterized proteins. Characterizing these protein functions may reveal potential proteins to control bacteria applying to infections. Mycobacterium smegmatis is a fast-growing bacterial species that is closely related to M. tuberculosis, which is responsible for the highly infectious tuberculosis disease. As M. tuberculosis requires three to four weeks to yield colonies in a Petri dish, M. smegmatis' relatively short generation time and nonpathogenic nature makes it a highly useful model organism for studying tuberculosis, which has become even more deadly with the rise of antibiotic resistance. Newly-discovered information contributes to a growing body of phage biology. This may contribute to diverse applications such as phage therapy against multi-drug resistant strains of bacteria like M. smegmatis and deeper understanding of microbial life. The present study was done to aid that goal by molecularly cloning and performing assays with bacteriophage LeBron genes 67 - 132. Out of the 57 genes studied, 22 were confirmed to be toxic. Further experiments such as defense and interaction assays need to be carried out in order to characterize the gene's function.