TY - JOUR
T1 - Restriction-modification systems and bacteriophage invasion
T2 - Who wins?
AU - Enikeeva, Farida N.
AU - Severinov, Konstantin V.
AU - Gelfand, Mikhail S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was partially supported by Grants from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research ( 09-04-01098 , FE), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ( 55005610 , MSG), NIH R01 grant GM9295 (KS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (programs “Molecular and Cellular Biology”, MSG, KS and “Genetics Diversity”, FE, MSG), and the Russian Science Agency under contract 2.740.11.0101.
PY - 2010/10
Y1 - 2010/10
N2 - The success of a phage that infects a bacterial cell possessing a restriction-modification (R-M) system depends on the activities of the host methyltransferase and restriction endonuclease, and the number of susceptible sites in the phage genome. However, there is no model describing this dependency and linking it to observable parameters such as the fraction of surviving cells under excess phage, or probability of plating at low amount of phages. We model the phage infection of a cell with a R-M system as a pure birth process with a killing state. We calculate the transitional probabilities and the stationary distribution for this process. We generalize the model developed for a single cell to the case of multiple identical cells invaded by a Poisson-distributed number of phages. The R-M enzyme activities are assumed to be constant, time-dependent, or random. The obtained results are used to estimate the ratio of the methyltransferase and endonuclease activities from the observed fraction of surviving cells.
AB - The success of a phage that infects a bacterial cell possessing a restriction-modification (R-M) system depends on the activities of the host methyltransferase and restriction endonuclease, and the number of susceptible sites in the phage genome. However, there is no model describing this dependency and linking it to observable parameters such as the fraction of surviving cells under excess phage, or probability of plating at low amount of phages. We model the phage infection of a cell with a R-M system as a pure birth process with a killing state. We calculate the transitional probabilities and the stationary distribution for this process. We generalize the model developed for a single cell to the case of multiple identical cells invaded by a Poisson-distributed number of phages. The R-M enzyme activities are assumed to be constant, time-dependent, or random. The obtained results are used to estimate the ratio of the methyltransferase and endonuclease activities from the observed fraction of surviving cells.
KW - Enzyme activities ratio
KW - Methyltransferase
KW - Pure birth process with killing
KW - Restriction endonuclease
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.07.006
DO - 10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.07.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 20633563
AN - SCOPUS:77955290534
SN - 0022-5193
VL - 266
SP - 550
EP - 559
JO - Journal of Theoretical Biology
JF - Journal of Theoretical Biology
IS - 4
ER -