Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14 carrying Pf5 prophage with pf5r gene mutation
This project is associated with a manuscript titled "Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness" by Nanami Kubota, Michelle R. Scribner, and Vaughn S. Cooper. In a previous experimental evolution study involving Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14 grown planktonically in media simulating nutrients found in cystic fibrosis lungs (Scribner et al., 2022; in J. Bacteriol.), we observed mutations in the Pf5 phage repressor (pf5r) gene reach high frequency. The pf5r gene is within the Pf5 prophage region and leads to high phage replication. For this study, we infected Pf5 pf5r mutant phage from the evolution experiment into wildtype P. aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14 to study the fitness effects of the pf5r mutation on the bacterial host and phage. This project contains whole genome sequencing of the bacteria, which includes reads from the Pf5 (pro)phage that the bacteria is infected with.