A 15-year-old cystic fibrosis patient with a disseminated Mycobacterium abscessus infection was treated with a three-phage cocktail following bilateral lung transplantation. Effective lytic phage derivatives that efficiently kill the infectious M. abscessus strain were developed by genome engineering and forward genetics. Intravenous phage treatment was well tolerated and associated with objective clinical improvement including sternal wound closure, improved liver function, and substantial resolution of infected skin nodules.

BackgroundBacteriophage genomes have mosaic architectures and are replete with small open reading frames of unknown function, presenting challenges in their annotation, comparative analysis, and representation.ResultsWe describe here a bioinformatic tool, Phamerator, that assorts protein-coding genes into phamilies of related sequences using pairwise comparisons to generate a database of gene relationships. This database is used to generate genome maps of multiple phages that incorporate nucleotide and amino acid sequence relationships, as well as genes containing conserved domains. Phamerator also generates phamily circle representations of gene phamilies, facilitating analysis of the different evolutionary histories of individual genes that migrate through phage populations by horizontal genetic exchange.ConclusionsPhamerator represents a useful tool for comparative genomic analysis and comparative representations of bacteriophage genomes.

Engaging large numbers of undergraduates in authentic scientific discovery is desirable but difficult to achieve. We have developed a general model in which faculty and teaching assistants from diverse academic institutions are trained to teach a research course for first-year undergraduate students focused on bacteriophage discovery and genomics. The course is situated within a broader scientific context aimed at understanding viral diversity, such that faculty and students are collaborators with established researchers in the field. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Science Education Alliance Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) course has been widely implemented and has been taken by over 4,800 students at 73 institutions. We show here that this alliance-sourced model not only substantially advances the field of phage genomics but also stimulates students’ interest in science, positively influences academic achievement, and enhances persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Broad application of this model by integrating other research areas with large numbers of early-career undergraduate students has the potential to be transformative in science education and research training.

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts. Expansion of a collection of sequenced phage genomes to a total of sixty -all infecting a common bacterial host -provides further insight into their diversity and evolution. Of the sixty phage genomes, 55 can be grouped into nine clusters according to their nucleotide sequence similarities, five of which can be further divided into subclusters; five genomes do not cluster with other phages. The sequence diversity between genomes within a cluster varies greatly; for example, the six genomes in cluster D share more than 97.5% average nucleotide similarity with each other. In contrast, similarity between the two genomes in Cluster I is barely detectable by diagonal plot analysis. The total of 6,858 predicted ORFs have been grouped into 1523 phamilies (phams) of related sequences, 46% of which possess only a single member. Only 18.8% of the phams have sequence similarity to non-mycobacteriophage database entries and fewer than 10% of all phams can be assigned functions based on database searching or synteny. Genome clustering facilitates the identification of genes that are in greatest genetic flux and are more likely to have been exchanged horizontally in relatively recent evolutionary time. Although mycobacteriophage genes exhibit smaller average size than genes of their host (205 residues compared to 315), phage genes in higher flux average only ∼100 amino acids, suggesting that the primary units of genetic exchange correspond to single protein domains.

The bacteriophage population is large, dynamic, ancient, and genetically diverse. Limited genomic information shows that phage genomes are mosaic, and the genetic architecture of phage populations remains ill-defined. To understand the population structure of phages infecting a single host strain, we isolated, sequenced, and compared 627 phages of Mycobacterium smegmatis. Their genetic diversity is considerable, and there are 28 distinct genomic types (clusters) with related nucleotide sequences. However, amino acid sequence comparisons show pervasive genomic mosaicism, and quantification of inter-cluster and intra-cluster relatedness reveals a continuum of genetic diversity, albeit with uneven representation of different phages. Furthermore, rarefaction analysis shows that the mycobacteriophage population is not closed, and there is a constant influx of genes from other sources. Phage isolation and analysis was performed by a large consortium of academic institutions, illustrating the substantial benefits of a disseminated, structured program involving large numbers of freshman undergraduates in scientific discovery.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06416.001