bacteriophage

Future treatment for acne: Smearing virus guts all over your face. YAY!

sa smith — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 09:00:55 +0000

Future treatment for acne: Smearing virus guts all over your face. YAY!

Its like, instead of 'Put a bird on it!', scientists are like 'Put a virus on it!'

Got cancer? Put a virus on it! In constant pain? Put a virus on it! Addicted to cigarettes? Put a virus on it! Genetic disease? Put a virus on it!

Got acne? Put a virus on it!

Propionibacterium acnes Bacteriophages Display Limited Genetic Diversity and Broad Killing Activity against Bacterial Skin Isolates

YAY!!!

Acne, though not life-threatening, sucks.

If you dont have acne, consider yourself lucky. Some people can get it relatively under control with a combination of over the counter meds and prescription meds (both with obnoxious side-effects), and neurotic behaviors. And of course, one persons ritual might not work for someone else.

Theres always Accutane (eee...). And then there are antibiotics. But of course antibiotics come with the obvious side-effect of drug resistant bacteria.

LETS PUT A VIRUS ON IT!!!

Fleas on the backs of fleas-- Like there are bacteria that live on us, there are viruses that live in bacteria. Bacteriophages. This group of scientists asked a fun question: Are the viruses on the faces of people with acne different than the viruses on the faces of people who dont have acne? Like, maybe the folks without acne have some virus that is really good at keeping the bacteria in check!

Oh, I forgot to mention, your face is covered in viruses. Specifically, these viruses:

Propionibacterium acnes Bacteriophages Display Limited Genetic Diversity and Broad Killing Activity against Bacterial Skin Isolates

Unfortunately, the answer to why some people have acne and some dont isnt as easy as 'good face viruses'. It turns out that there isnt a whole heck of a lot different, genetically, between the viruses found on acne/non-acne faces.

But the scientists still learned some cool things--

1-- The viruses they found were good at blowing up the bacteria that cause acne! YAY! Maybe we could put viruses into anti-acne creams!

2-- The bacteria could become resistant to the viruses. BOO! We are back in the same boat as we were before with the antibiotics.

3-- The enzymes these viruses use to dissolve the bacterial cell wall when they want to release lots of babby viruses was also good at blowing up bacteria! Outside of the context of the virus! And since these enzymes target highly conserved parts of the bacterial cell wall, the bacteria arent developing resistance to the virus guts! And instead of taking days-->weeks to work, like antibiotics, these enzymes blew up the bacteria in minutes! So theoretically, one could make a cocktail of these enzymes (from different viruses) and turn that into an anti-acne treatment!! YAY AGAIN!

Oh viruses! Is there anything you all cant do?

sa smith Wed, 09/26/2012 - 05:00

Virus and bacteria team up to save aphid from parasitic wasp

edyong — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:00:47 +0000

Virus and bacteria team up to save aphid from parasitic wasp

Viruses and bacteria often act as parasites, infecting a host, reproducing at its expense and causing disease and death. But not always - sometimes, their infections are positively beneficial and on rare occasions, they can actually defend their hosts from parasitism rather than playing the role themselves.

In the body of one species of aphid, a bacterium and a virus have formed a unlikely partnership to defend their host from a lethal wasp called Aphidius ervi. The wasp turns aphids into living larders for its larvae, laying eggs inside unfortunate animals that are eventually eaten from the inside out. But the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) has a defence - some individuals are infected by guardian bacteria (Hamiltonella defensa) that save their host by somehow killing the developing wasp larvae.

H.defensa can be passed down from mother to daughter or even sexually transmitted. Infection rates go up dramatically when aphids are threatened by parasitic wasps. But not all strains are the same; some provide substantially more protection than others and Kerry Oliver from the University of Georgia has found out why.

H.defensa's is only defensive when it itself is infected by a virus - a bacteriophage called APSE (or "A.pisum secondary endosymbiont" in full). APSE produces toxins that are suspected to target the tissues of animals, such as those of invading wasp grubs. The phage infects the bacteria, which in turn infect the aphids - it's this initial step that protects against the wasps.

Oliver set up populations of pea aphids that were all genetically identical. Some of them carried H.defensa in their bodies while others did not, and of the infected individuals, some were also ridden with the APSE-3 phage. He unleashed the wasp A.ervi upon all of these individuals, and waited.

The results clearly demonstrated the importance of having both virus and bacteria - with the full alliance intact, less than 10% of the aphids fell victim to the wasp. If one or both of the partners was absent, the wasp successfully parasitized 90% of its potential hosts. Without the phage, the aphids might as well not have been infected by H.defensa at all, for all the good it did.

The phage bestows protective powers on the bacteria thanks to a single gene that encodes a toxic protein. It also makes a lot of it - the toxin-producing gene is almost three times as active as one of the most active genes in the bacterium's own genome. How exactly this poison kills the wasp is unclear and it's worth noting that H.defensa's has toxins of its own. The most intriguing possibility is that somehow the viral and bacterial poisons work together to kill the wasp, but that's a theory to be tested in the future.

In lab conditions, the alliance between bacterium and virus is a very stable one, but in the wild, H.defensa has a bad habit of spontaneously losing its all-important phage lodger. Even within a single aphid, only some bacteria have viral genes integrated into their own. No one knows why the virus should disappear so frequently. Perhaps it's not an entirely welcome tenant and its presence carries some sort of cost that occasionally outweighs its benefits. Perhaps only phage-free H.defensa can be passed on from aphid to aphid.

Regardless, case of the pea aphid is a great example of the role of phages as vehicles for genes, shuffling them between bacteria and providing the carriers with extra superpowers. In almost all cases, these gene transfers affect the ability to cause disease. It's a phage that carries the CTX toxin that the bacterium Vibrio cholerae needs to cause cholera. It's a phage that carries the Shiga toxin that turns harmless strains of Escherichia coli into a bug capable of causing severe food poisoning.

The APSE-3 phage is different - its toxin, far from turning its host into a more effective parasite, actually turns it into an anti-parasite defender. Faced with an enemy that threatens them all, the virus, the bacterium and the aphid have formed an evolutionary alliance, with infection as its foundation.

Of course, not all parasitic wasps are foiled by viruses - some have managed to turn them into biological weapons, stealing their genes and using them to subdue their caterpillar prey...

Reference: Science 10.1126/science.1174463

More on beneficial viruses:

edyong Fri, 08/21/2009 - 04:00

Minor correction, Ed - although Dr. Oliver might not consider it so minor:

"She unleashed the wasp A.ervi upon all of these individuals, and waited."

Actually, he unleashed the wasp. You linked to his faculty bio page, but apparently never looked at it, because Kerry Oliver is awfully rugged-looking and bearded for a 'she.'

How is the virus transmitted? Seems like there would be selection for protecting the host only if it's transmitted to host offspring, presumably inside with the bacteria. If it ever evolves the ability to infect and reproduce in the wasps, I'd expect it to suppress rather than strengthen host defenses.

Oh God - n00b error! You know, I once sent a female scientist a write-up of their work for fact-checking and referred to them as "he" throughout. She sent it back with a couple of technical corrections but didn't spot the gender-bending one.

Ford-
My impression is that the phage is usually transmitted along with the infected facultative symbiont from parent to offspring, though it can be lost (rendering the Hamiltonella worse than useless). Since this is a phage, there would have to be a susceptible microbe in the wasps for it to infect.

Ed, you use the construction "H.defensa's" in a way that seems odd to me more than once in the article. Is it just a cut'n'paste anomaly, or am I missing some meaning?

Once again I am led to doubt that the phage should really be treated as an organism independently from the bacterium. You don't always wear your hat, but it's still your hat.

Anthrax bacteria get help from viruses and worms to survive

edyong — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:00:39 +0000

Anthrax bacteria get help from viruses and worms to survive

When the bacteria that cause anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) aren't ravaging livestock or being used in acts of bioterrorism, they spend their lives as dormant spores. In these inert but hardy forms, the bacteria can weather tough environmental conditions while lying in wait for their next host. This is the standard explanation for what B.anthracis does between infections, and it's too simple by far. It turns out that the bacterium has a far more interesting secret life involving two unusual partners - viruses and earthworms.

A dying animal can release up to a billion bacterial cells in every single millilitre of blood. This torrent of microbes provides a feast of riches for bacteriophages - viruses that infect bacteria. Raymond Schuch and Vincent Fischetti from the Rockefeller University have found that the anthrax bacterium depends on becoming infected by phages. They began by isolating several strains of phages that specifically infect B.anthracis. The viruses hailed from a range of sources, including the soil, plant roots and worm guts. <

When these phages find bacterial targets, they inject their own DNA, which insinuates itself into the genome of the host. This process is called lysogeny and it is essential for the bacterium's survival. The added viral DNA encodes proteins called sigma factors that change how bacterial genes are switched on. In doing so, they change the behaviour of the bacteria, giving them new abilities that boost their survival and allow them to colonise an intermediate host - the earthworm.

With their newly incorporated viral DNA, some bacteria formed spores while others were actually prevented from doing so, depending on the phage. Regardless, all the anthrax bacteria grew at almost twice the rate. The phage DNA brought out the social side of the bacteria, inducing them to cluster in groups. It also made them more likely to secreted more complex sugar molecules that form the building blocks of biofilms - the bacterial equivalent of towns and cities. Amid this matrix of sugars, the cells find shelter and protection.

Small wonder then that the infected bacteria are much better are surviving for long durations. Their advantage was so great in comparison to virus-free strains that Schuch and Fischetti suggest that phage infections may actually be necessary if anthrax bacteria are to survive in soil. Indeed, duo identified three bacterial genes that are activated by the phages and that are necessary for eking out a living in soil. When they inactivated these genes, the bacteria survived in these environments for the briefest of times.

The bacteria don't have to survive in isolation either. Schuch and Fischetti speculate that their biofilms act as a staging ground from which to find a new host. Again, their viral hitchhikers come into play, giving them the ability to set up long-term colonies in the guts of earthworms. That's hardly an easy environment, for it's extremely low in oxygen and most bacteria are digested or excreted. Any permanent hangers-on must be able to stick tightly to the walls of the gut. The genetic manipulations of the virus could activate some latent ability of the bacteria to do just that.

The idea of worms as alternative hosts for anthrax bacteria, in between their decimations of livestock, was first put forward by Louis Pasteur in the 19^th century, after he noticed that the soil near anthrax carcasses were rife with earthworms. Ignored for over a century, Pasteur's idea has finally been confirmed.

The viruses within the bacteria aren't totally dormant. Within a small proportion of cells, they multiply as viruses typically do, bursting out of their host and shedding thousands of infectious daughter virses into the environment. This process may kill a few of the anthrax bacteria, but it provides a route for the survivors to trade genetic material between each other.

As phage DNA hops in and out of bacterial genomes, they could take snippets of local DNA with them, transferring them from host to host and increasing the genetic diversity of the population. Don't underestimate how extreme these changes can be: in a previous study, Jonathan Kiel showed that a phage taken from a related species, Bacillus cereus, managed to change a strain of anthrax bacteria so greatly that it was no longer genetically recognisable as the original strain, or even as the right species!

The picture painted by this new study is a far cry from the somewhat dull idea of anthrax bacteria lying dormant in the soil. Instead, it seems that the bacteria lead a secret life, and a most dynamic one, involving hidden potential unleashed by bacterial invaders-turned-partners.

Reference: Schuch, R., & Fischetti, V. (2009). The Secret Life of the Anthrax Agent Bacillus anthracis: Bacteriophage-Mediated Ecological Adaptations PLoS ONE, 4 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006532

Images: Cow by Daniel Schwen

More on anthrax and phages:

edyong Wed, 08/12/2009 - 06:00

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Environment

It seems to me this should lead us toward suspicion of the independence of phages, and to consider them as organelles or tools of the bacteria. I.e., where did the phages come from in the first place? Is being independently equipped with all the genes for reproduction necessary for this role? Are all phages indeed so equipped? Has anyone checked?

We might view the soil viruses collectively as a genetic library for the bacteria, preserving and providing on demand the technology to thrive in each micro-environment. The bacterium, then, need only carry around a base genome, and pick up what it needs where it lands. Farm animals might represent an unusual low-phage-density, but uniform, environment for which they must -- but can afford to -- carry a specialized genome. The soil, by contrast, is very complex and varied, but the genes needed to survive in each bit can be left behind, packaged as phages, to be picked up as needed.

Or maybe B. a. also draws upon a library of infectiousness-encoding phages it finds in animals' guts.

It's an easy step from book of useful genes to virus. I wonder whether most things that look like phages really are, technically, viruses at all. To test this: do B. anthracis carry any genes whose sole use is to reproduce these phages? If so, that's the smoking gun; if not, we need some other test.

Or maybe the whole virus world originated as "packages of genes left behind".

Trond: Exactly! But the question has been, how do you demonstrate it?

Wasps inject particles that are physically identical to viruses, but lack the genes to code themselves. It seems clear that they started out as a proper virus, because the genes that code it are bunched up on one wasp chromosome. Finding equivalent phage particles would be suggestive, but not conclusive. Suggestions for what else might constitute a proper test, anyone?

Woah ... a virus that's a symbiote? I knew about the wasp that uses a domesticated retrovirus, but this is really cool.

Even the viruses that destroy their host, it seems, would still function as a symbiotic relationship, given that the bacteria reproduce asexually, and thus, it's really more of a situation where the bacterial colony gives some of its members to the viruses?

Very intriguing stuff! I wonder how many more such viral symbiotes there are?

But it seems to me that if this is the case, then the original phage production would have to have been an altruistic act - phages left behind by one bacterium can infect and confer benefit to bacteria that do not produce the phages themselves. So what would have been the selective advantage that drove the evolution of this "proto-phage" production in the first place?

I've been thinking of this since my last post, too. Not good, since I obviously don't know what I'm talking about, but:

Nathan: Exactly! But the question has been, how do you demonstrate it?

By systematic work with the genetic tree of viruses? Might it, in spite of the constant mutations, be feasible to identify one or more core elements that show little change? In that case one might try to identify what part of bacterial (or other) DNA it originally belonged to and find a plausible benefit from leaving that behind for later.

amphiox: So what would have been the selective advantage that drove the evolution of this "proto-phage" production in the first place?

- A cyclic change of conditions.
- String(s) of DNA useful in one environment and harmful in the other.
- A good chance to retrieve the DNA when environment changes back.

The cyclic change could be between an host organism and soil, like for the anthrax bacteria, but this would perhaps have had to be initiated with a stationary host. It could also be a chemical environment with seasons and weather, say water based or dry, again like anthrax, or oxygene based and sulphur based.

amphiox: Excellent question. But the entire population of a parthenogenetically reproducing organism is, in an evolutionarily meaningful sense, really all one organism, just dispersed in space. (In slime molds they even come back together; and how is a bacterial film different from a body?) Your gut is doing equally altruistic stuff on behalf of, well, your gonads, I suppose. But the bacteria are all gonads, so they're all selectively motivated to help one another, to the extent that they can.

The genes they stuff into the viruses -- or that succeed in getting themselves stuffed inthere, as the case may be -- are on their own, but certainly stand to benefit from usefulness, whether they end up in a copy of the mother bacterium or in somebody else entirely. However, they're much more likely to propagate in the former. It's a dilemma: infect a stranger now, and maybe die, or infect mom later, maybe never. Anyway usefulness is selected for in phages in a way that would never occur in viruses that infect us.

Somebody must have thought all this through before. I would love to know where it's all written down.

Great discussion folks. And if you like phages, and their alliances with bacteria, I've got a great story for you later on in the week...