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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2008, p. 5806-5813, Vol. 190, No. 17
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01802-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

The Role of Prophage for Genome Diversification within a Clonal Lineage of Lactobacillus johnsonii: Characterization of the Defective Prophage LJ771 ^,

Emmanuel Denou,^1,2, Raymond David Pridmore,^1, Marco Ventura,^3, Anne-Cécile Pittet,¹ Marie-Camille Zwahlen,¹ Bernard Berger,¹ Caroline Barretto,¹ Jean-Michel Panoff,² and Harald Brüssow^1*

Nestlé Research Center, Nestec Ltd., P.O. Box 44, CH-1000 Lausanne 26, Switzerland,¹ Laboratoire de Microbiologie Alimentaire, IBFA-ISBIO, Université de Caen, F-14032 Caen cedex, France,² Department of Genetics, Anthropology and Evolution, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 11/a, 43100 Parma, Italy³

Received 14 November 2007/ Accepted 22 May 2008

Two independent isolates of the gut commensal Lactobacillus johnsonii were sequenced. These isolates belonged to the same clonal lineage and differed mainly by a 40.8-kb prophage, LJ771, belonging to the Sfi11 phage lineage. LJ771 shares close DNA sequence identity with Lactobacillus gasseri prophages. LJ771 coexists as an integrated prophage and excised circular phage DNA, but phage DNA packaged into extracellular phage particles was not detected. Between the phage lysin gene and attR a likely mazE ("antitoxin")/pemK ("toxin") gene cassette was detected in LJ771 but not in the L. gasseri prophages. Expressed pemK could be cloned in Escherichia coli only together with the mazE gene. LJ771 was shown to be highly stable and could be cured only by coexpression of mazE from a plasmid. The prophage was integrated into the methionine sulfoxide reductase gene (msrA) and complemented the 5' end of this gene, creating a protein with a slightly altered N-terminal sequence. The two L. johnsonii strains had identical in vitro growth and in vivo gut persistence phenotypes. Also, in an isogenic background, the presence of the prophage resulted in no growth disadvantage.

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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Nestlé Research Centre, Nutrition and Health Department/Food and Health Microbiology, CH-1000 Lausanne 26 Vers-chez-les-Blanc, Switzerland. Phone: 41 21 785 8676. Fax: 41 21 785 8544. E-mail: harald.bruessow{at}rdls.nestle.com

Published ahead of print on 30 May 2008.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/.

E.D., R.D.P., and M.V. contributed equally to this work.

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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2008, p. 5806-5813, Vol. 190, No. 17
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01802-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

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