Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Program in Microbiology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Microbiology (Reading). 2024 Jul;170(7). doi: 10.1099/mic.0.001467.
Bacteriophage ϕ6 is a segmented dsRNA virus with a lipid envelope, which are unusual traits in bacterial viruses but common in eukaryotic viruses. This uniqueness allowed ϕ6 and its hosts to serve as a molecular model for RNA genetics, mutation, replication, packaging, and reassortment in both bacterial and eukaryotic viruses. However, an additional uniqueness of ϕ6, created by its high mutation rate, was its use as an experimental system to study key questions such as the evolution of sex (segment reassortment), host-pathogen interactions, mutational load, rates of adaptation, genetic and phenotypic complexity, and game theory.
φ6 噬菌体是一种带有脂质包膜的分段 dsRNA 病毒，这在细菌病毒中是不常见的特征，但在真核病毒中很常见。这种独特性使得 φ6 噬菌体及其宿主成为 RNA 遗传学、突变、复制、包装和重配在细菌和真核病毒中的分子模型。然而，φ6 噬菌体的另一个独特之处在于其高突变率，使其成为一个实验系统，用于研究关键问题，如性的进化（片段重排）、宿主-病原体相互作用、突变负荷、适应率、遗传和表型复杂性以及博弈论。
