Journal
VIRUS EVOLUTION
Volume 7, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/ve/veab015
Keywords
large terminase; TerL; DNA packaging; Rhodobacter capsulatus; RcGTA; alphaproteobacteria
Categories
Funding
- Dartmouth College
- Sophomore Research Scholarship
- James O. Freedman Presidential Scholarship
- Thomas B. Roos Memorial Fund Fellowship
- Kaminsky Undergraduate Research Award
- Intramural Research and Training Award from the National Institutes of Health
- Simons Foundation Investigator in Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems award [327936]
- National Science Foundation award [DEB-1551674]
- Intramural Research Program of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (National Library of Medicine)
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Gene transfer agents (GTAs) are virus-like particles produced by bacteria and archaea that can transfer genes within communities. GTAs are thought to have evolved from viruses and maintained in prokaryotic genomes due to their DNA transfer capacity. The most-studied GTA, produced by Rhodobacter capsulatus, evolved from a headful packaging virus to be able to package random pieces of the host genome.
Gene transfer agents (GTAs) are virus-like particles encoded and produced by many bacteria and archaea. Unlike viruses, GTAs package fragments of the host genome instead of the genes that encode the components of the GTA itself. As a result of this non-specific DNA packaging, GTAs can transfer genes within bacterial and archaeal communities. GTAs clearly evolved from viruses and are thought to have been maintained in prokaryotic genomes due to the advantages associated with their DNA transfer capacity. The most-studied GTA is produced by the alphaproteobacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus (RcGTA), which packages random portions of the host genome at a lower DNA density than usually observed in tailed bacterial viruses. How the DNA packaging properties of RcGTA evolved from those of the ancestral virus remains unknown. To address this question, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of the large subunit of the terminase (TerL), a highly conserved enzyme used by viruses and GTAs to package DNA. We found that RcGTA-like TerLs grouped within viruses that employ the headful packaging strategy. Because distinct mechanisms of viral DNA packaging correspond to differences in the TerL amino acid sequence, our finding suggests that RcGTA evolved from a headful packaging virus. Headful packaging is the least sequence-specific mode of DNA packaging, which would facilitate the switch from packaging of the viral genome to packaging random pieces of the host genome during GTA evolution.
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