{"doi":"10.1371/journal.ppat.1012122","title":"Characterization and genomic analysis of the Lyme disease spirochete bacteriophage ϕBB-1","abstract":"Lyme disease is a tick-borne infection caused by the spirochete Borrelia (Borreliella) burgdorferi. Borrelia species have highly fragmented genomes composed of a linear chromosome and a constellation of linear and circular plasmids some of which are required throughout the enzootic cycle. Included in this plasmid repertoire by almost all Lyme disease spirochetes are the 32-kb circular plasmid cp32 prophages that are capable of lytic replication to produce infectious virions called ϕBB-1. While the B. burgdorferi genome contains evidence of horizontal transfer, the mechanisms of gene transfer between strains remain unclear. While we know that ϕBB-1 transduces cp32 and shuttle vector DNA during in vitro cultivation, the extent of ϕBB-1 DNA transfer is not clear. Herein, we use proteomics and long-read sequencing to further characterize ϕBB-1 virions. Our studies identified the cp32 pac region and revealed that ϕBB-1 packages linear cp32s via a headful mechanism with preferential packaging of plasmids containing the cp32 pac region. Additionally, we find ϕBB-1 packages fragments of the linear chromosome and full-length plasmids including lp54, cp26, and others. Furthermore, sequencing of ϕBB-1 packaged DNA allowed us to resolve the covalently closed hairpin telomeres for the linear B. burgdorferi chromosome and most linear plasmids in strain CA-11.2A. Collectively, our results shed light on the biology of the ubiquitous ϕBB-1 phage and further implicates ϕBB-1 in the generalized transduction of diverse genes and the maintenance of genetic diversity in Lyme disease spirochetes.","journal":"PLoS Pathogens","year":2024,"id":431499,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":16,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9471,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":265665,"name":"Margie Kinnersley","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1011247,"name":"Diane M. Brooks","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":443700,"name":"Dan Drecktrah","orcid":"0000-0001-7090-6236","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":384501,"name":"Laura S. Hall","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1236243,"name":"Eric Luo","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":469768,"name":"Andrew Santiago‐Frangos","orcid":"0000-0001-9615-065X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":990700,"name":"Jenny Wachter","orcid":"0000-0003-2175-5595","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":383730,"name":"D. Scott Samuels","orcid":"0000-0001-8352-7593","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264746,"name":"Patrick R. Secor","orcid":"0000-0001-7123-3037","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1074920,"name":"Dominick R. Faith","orcid":"0009-0009-3093-9661","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":124,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:59:30.747263Z","pmid":"38558079","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}