New PreMiEr Publication: How E. coli Rewires Its Genes to Resist Viruses and Iron
A new PreMiEr study uses RNA sequencing to show that E. coli relies on very different genetic programs to resist phage attack and iron stress.
Building on earlier work showing that phage resistance in E. coli B also helps the bacteria tolerate high iron, PreMiEr researchers at NC A&T used RNA sequencing to see how gene activity changes in evolved populations. Iron adapted populations consistently switched on genes that remodel the bacterial outer membrane, whether they adapted to iron directly or after first resisting phage. Phage resistance produced a separate genetic signature centered on stress and chaperone genes. The findings, published in Antibiotics, show that bacteria defend against physical threats like viruses and chemical threats like metals in distinct ways, with little sign of a single shared stress response.
Read more here: https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics15070684