Experimental evolution of UV resistance in a phage

Abstract

The dsDNA bacteriophage T7 was subjected to 30 cycles of lethal ultraviolet light (UV) exposure to select increased resistance to UV. The exposure effected a 0.9999 kill of the ancestral population, and survival of the ending population was nearly 50-fold improved. At the end point, a 2.1 kb deletion of early genes and three substitutions in structural-genes were the only changes observed at high frequency throughout the 40 kb genome; no changes were observed in genes affecting DNA metabolism. The deletion accounted for only a two-fold improvement in survival. One possible explanation of its benefit is that it represents an error catastrophe, whereby the genome experiences a reduced mutation rate. The mechanism of benefit provided by the three structural-gene mutations remains unknown. The results offer some hope of artificially evolving greater protection against sunlight damage in applications of phage therapy to plants, but the response of T7 is weak compared to that observed in bacteria selected to resist ionizing radiation. Because of the weak response, mathematical analysis of the selection process was performed to determine how the protocol might have been modified to achieve a greater response, but the greatest protection may well come from evolving phages to bind materials that block the UV.