Speaker
Description
Bacteriophage infection is shaped by small metabolites and dinucleotides, which can act as crucial regulatory molecules in virus–host interactions. One prominent example is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a central redox cofactor that also serves as an RNA cap. In this project, we investigate how NAD-capped RNAs influence bacteriophage infection using the T4–Escherichia coli system as a model. We identify the first NAD-capped RNAs in this infection context and show that RNA modifications can modulate phage–host processes, including RNAylation, a recently discovered reaction in which the T4 ADP-ribosyltransferase ModB transfers NAD-capped RNAs to proteins. Together, our results indicate that NAD-RNAs represent an additional regulatory layer in bacteriophage infection and suggest that similar RNA modification-dependent mechanisms may operate in other bacteria–phage systems.
Reference #1
Wolfram-Schauerte M, Keuthen H, Moskalchuk A, Ueffing T, Pozhydaieva N, Ramírez Rojas AA, Schindler D, Kaiser S, Paczia N, Höfer K. T4 phage RNA is NAD-capped and alters the NAD-cap epitranscriptome of Escherichia coli during infection through a phage-encoded decapping enzyme. bioRxiv. 2024. doi: 10.1101/2024.04.04.588121.
Reference #2
Wolfram-Schauerte M, Pozhydaieva N, Grawenhoff J, Welp LM, Silbern I, Wulf A, Billau FA, Glatter T, Urlaub H, Jäschke A, Höfer K. A viral ADP-ribosyltransferase attaches RNA chains to host proteins. Nature. 2023;620:1054–1062. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06429-2.
