ArticleMicrobiome2018
A diversity-generating retroelement encoded by a globally ubiquitous Bacteroides phage.
Article in Microbiome, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 82 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinct Evolutionary Selection Patterns in Temperate and Filamentous Phages of Phocaeicola vulgatus in Health and IBD.Research square · 2026Article
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- Bacterial defense mechanisms against bacteriophages: an evolutionary arms race.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
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- Discovering Broader Host Ranges and an IS-bound Prophage Class Through Long-Read Metagenomics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A hypermobile prophage in the genome of a key human gut bacterium.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Lactococcal phage-host profiling through binding studies between cell wall polysaccharide types andMicrobial genomics · 2025Article
- Prophages in the infant gut are pervasively induced and may modulate the functionality of their hosts.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Incomplete lytic cycle of a widespread Bacteroides bacteriophage leads to the formation of defective viral particles.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Insights into diversity, host-range, and temporal stability of Bacteroides and Phocaeicola prophages.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Identification and characterization ofMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- The arms race in bacteria-phage interaction: deciphering bacteria defense and phage anti-defense mechanisms through metagenomics.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Review
- Identification of diversity-generating retroelements in host-associated and environmental genomes: prevalence, diversity, and roles.BMC genomics · 2024Article
- Phage-inclusive profiling of human gut microbiomes with Phanta.Nature biotechnology · 2024Article
- Infant gut DNA bacteriophage strain persistence during the first 3 years of life.Cell host & microbe · 2024Article
- Tentaclins-A Novel Family of Phage Receptor-Binding Proteins That Can Be Hypermutated by DGR Systems.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Knowing and Naming: Phage Annotation and Nomenclature for Phage Therapy.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2023Review
- Phages are unrecognized players in the ecology of the oral pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis.Microbiome · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDiversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are genetic cassettes that selectively mutate target genes to produce hypervariable proteins. First characterized in Bordetella bacteriophage BPP-1, the DGR creates a hypervariable phage tail fiber that enables host tropism switching. Subsequent surveys for DGRs conclude that the majority identified to date are bacterial or archaeal in origin. This work examines bacteriophage and bacterial genomes for novel phage-encoded DGRs.
resultsThis survey discovered 92 DGRs that were only found in phages exhibiting a temperate lifestyle. The majority of phage-encoded DGRs were identified as prophages in bacterial hosts from the phyla Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes. Sequence reads from these previously unidentified prophages were present in viral metagenomes (viromes), indicating these prophages can produce functional viruses. Five phages possessed hypervariable proteins with structural similarity to the tail fiber of BPP-1, whereas the functions of the remaining DGR target proteins were unknown. A novel temperate phage that harbors a DGR cassette targeting a protein of unknown function was induced from Bacteroides dorei. This phage, here named Bacteroides dorei Hankyphage, lysogenizes 13 different Bacteroides species and was present in 34% and 21% of whole-community metagenomes and human-associated viromes, respectively.
conclusionsHere, the number of known DGR-containing phages is increased from four to 92. All of these phages exhibit a temperate lifestyle, including a cosmopolitan human-associated phage. Targeted hypervariation by temperate phages may be a ubiquitous mechanism underlying phage-bacteria interaction in the human microbiome.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.