Φ6 бактериофагы: құрылымы, геномы және эволюциялық зерттеулер моделі

Species of virus

Φ6 (Phi 6) is the best studied bacteriophage of the virus family Cystoviridae. It infects Pseudomonas bacteria (typically plant pathogenic P. syringae). It has a three part, segmented, double stranded RNA genome, totalling ~13.5 kb in length. Φ6 and its relatives have a lipid membrane around their nucleocapsid, a rare trait among bacteriophages. It is a lytic phage, though under certain circumstances has been observed to display a delay in lysis which may be described as a "carrier state".

The genome of Φ6 codes for 12 proteins. P1 is a major capsid protein which is responsible of forming the skeleton of the polymerase complex. In the interior of the shell formed by P1 is the P2 viral replicase and transcriptase protein. The spikes binding to receptors on the Φ6 virion are formed by the protein P3. P4 is a nucleoside triphosphatase which is required for the genome packaging and transcription. P5 is a lytic enzyme. The spike protein P3 is anchored to a fusogenic envelope protein in P6. P7 is a minor capsid protein, P8 is responsible of forming the nucleocapsid surface shell and P9 is a major envelope protein. P12 is a non structural morphogenic protein shown to be a part of the envelope assembly. P10 and P13 are proteins coding genes that are associated with the viral envelope and P14 is a non structural protein.

Φ6 has been studied as a model to understand how segmented RNA viruses package their genomes, its structure has been studied by scientists interested in lipid containing bacteriophages, and it has been used as a model organism to test evolutionary theory such as Muller's ratchet. Phage Φ6 has been used extensively in additional phage experimental evolution studies.