Preprint just dropped!! This story explores the complex relationship Pf phages have with their bacterial hosts, using a new technique to cure clinical P. aeruginosa isolates if their chronic phage infection… 🧵1/7
Targeted deletion of Pf prophages from diverse Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates impacts quorum sensing and virulence traits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.19.567716v1
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic bacterial pathogen that commonly causes medical hardware,
UNTIL we decided to run an excision assay to check if the prophage was in the bacterial chromosome. Turns out deleting this gene, which we named Pf-lysogeny-maintenance (pflM) caused Pf4 to pop out! 🧵 3/7
Back in 2020, my first year of grad school, I was making deletion mutants of each gene writhing the core Pf genome. One pesky gene I just couldn’t seem to get a mutant for, and after a few tries we almost threw in the towel…. 🧵 2/7
Fun story--congrats!