Journal article
Staphylococcal phages and pathogenicity islands drive plasmid evolution
- Abstract:
- Conjugation has classically been considered the main mechanism driving plasmid transfer in nature. Yet bacteria frequently carry so-called non-transmissible plasmids, raising questions about how these plasmids spread. Interestingly, the size of many mobilisable and non-transmissible plasmids coincides with the average size of phages (~40 kb) or that of a family of pathogenicity islands, the phage-inducible chromosomal islands (PICIs, ~11 kb). Here, we show that phages and PICIs from Staphylococcus aureus can mediate intra- and inter-species plasmid transfer via generalised transduction, potentially contributing to non-transmissible plasmid spread in nature. Further, staphylococcal PICIs enhance plasmid packaging efficiency, and phages and PICIs exert selective pressures on plasmids via the physical capacity of their capsids, explaining the bimodal size distribution observed for non-conjugative plasmids. Our results highlight that transducing agents (phages, PICIs) have important roles in bacterial plasmid evolution and, potentially, in antimicrobial resistance transmission.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 2.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-26101-5
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Article number:
- 5845
- Publication date:
- 2021-10-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-07
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1193933
- Local pid:
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pubs:1193933
- Deposit date:
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2021-09-07
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Humphrey et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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