Research article
The role of interactions between bacterial chaperone, aspartate aminotransferase, and viral protein during virus infection in high temperature environment: the interactions between bacterium and virus proteins
1 Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology for Endangered Wildlife of the Ministry of Education and College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, The People’s Republic of China
2 Key Laboratory of Marine Biogenetic Resources, Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Xiamen 361005, P.R. China
3 State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 102206, China
BMC Microbiology 2013, 13:48 doi:10.1186/1471-2180-13-48
Published: 26 February 2013Abstract
Background
The life cycle of a bacteriophage has tightly programmed steps to help virus infect its host through the interactions between the bacteriophage and its host proteins. However, bacteriophage–host protein interactions in high temperature environment remain poorly understood. To address this issue, the protein interaction between the thermophilic bacteriophage GVE2 and its host thermophilic Geobacillus sp. E263 from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent was characterized.
Results
This investigation showed that the host’s aspartate aminotransferase (AST), chaperone GroEL, and viral capsid protein VP371 formed a linearly interacted complex. The results indicated that the VP371-GroEL-AST complex were up-regulated and co-localized in the GVE2 infection of Geobacillus sp. E263.
Conclusions
As reported, the VP371 is a capsid protein of GVE2 and the host AST is essential for the GVE2 infection. Therefore, our study revealed that the phage could use the anti-stress system of its host to protect the virus reproduction in a high-temperature environment for the first time.
