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Science 15 March 2002:
Vol. 295. no. 5562, pp. 2091 - 2094
DOI: 10.1126/science.1067467
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Reports

Reverse Transcriptase-Mediated Tropism Switching in Bordetella Bacteriophage

Minghsun Liu,1 Rajendar Deora,1* Sergei R. Doulatov,1* Mari Gingery,1 Frederick A. Eiserling,1 Andrew Preston,2 Duncan J. Maskell,2 Robert W. Simons,1 Peggy A. Cotter,3 Julian Parkhill,4 Jeff F. Miller1dagger

Host-pathogen interactions are often driven by mechanisms that promote genetic variability. We have identified a group of temperate bacteriophages that generate diversity in a gene, designated mtd (major tropism determinant), which specifies tropism for receptor molecules on host Bordetella species. Tropism switching is the result of a template-dependent, reverse transcriptase-mediated process that introduces nucleotide substitutions at defined locations within mtd. This cassette-based mechanism is capable of providing a vast repertoire of potential ligand-receptor interactions.

1 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
2 Centre for Veterinary Science, Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 OES, UK.
3 Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
4 The Sanger Centre, The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hixton, Cambridge, UK.
*   These authors contributed equally to this work.

dagger    To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jfmiller{at}ucla.edu.

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