Abstract
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are important microorganisms in food fermentation. In the food industry, bacteriophages (phages or bacterial viruses) may cause the disruption of LAB-dependent processes with product inconsistencies and economic losses. LAB phages use diverse adhesion devices to infect their host, yet the overall picture of host-binding mechanisms remains incomplete. Here, we aimed to determine the structure and topology of the adhesion devices of two lytic siphophages, OE33PA and Vinitor162, infecting the wine bacteria Oenococcus oeni. These phages possess adhesion devices with a distinct composition and morphology and likely use different infection mechanisms. We primarily used AlphaFold2, an algorithm that can predict protein structure with unprecedented accuracy, to obtain a 3D model of the adhesion devices’ components. Using our prior knowledge of the architecture of the LAB phage host-binding machineries, we also reconstituted the topology of OE33PA and Vinitor162 adhesion devices. While OE33PA exhibits original structures in the assembly of its bulky adhesion device, Vinitor162 harbors several carbohydrate-binding modules throughout its long and extended adhesion device. Overall, these results highlight the ability of AlphaFold2 to predict protein structures and illustrate its great potential in the study of phage structures and host-binding mechanisms.
Highlights
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)-infecting bacteriophages use diverse host-binding mechanisms, yet the overall picture of the interactions between LAB phages and their host remains incomplete
We explored the capacity of AlphaFold2 to predict the structure and topology of different adhesion devices of the O. oeni-infecting phages OE33PA and Vinitor162
We have shown that the OE33PA adhesion device has three components: distal tail (Dit), Tail-associated lysozyme (Tal), and receptor-binding proteins (RBP)
Summary
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)-infecting bacteriophages (phages or bacterial viruses) use diverse host-binding mechanisms, yet the overall picture of the interactions between LAB phages and their host remains incomplete. Phages may disrupt LAB-dependent processes, causing serious concomitant economic losses. This is the case in dairy plants, where phages infecting the LAB species Lactococcus lactis and Streptococcus thermophilus are problematic and have experienced extensive scientific scrutiny [1,2,3]. LAB and their phages, even though they may have a significant impact on fermentation processes and the quality of final products. This is true for fermented beverages, as exemplified by the emblematic and economically important field of winemaking, which relies heavily on the LAB species Oenococcus oeni.
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