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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Phage Biology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1522711
This article is part of the Research Topic Bacteriophages, Prophages, and Their Products: Regulating Bacterial Populations View all 10 articles

Geographic Variation in Abundance and Diversity of Acinetobacter baumannii Vieuvirus Bacteriophages

Provisionally accepted
Dafne Arellano-Maciel Dafne Arellano-Maciel 1Juan Manuel Hurtado-Ramírez Juan Manuel Hurtado-Ramírez 2Laura Carolina Camelo-Valera Laura Carolina Camelo-Valera 3Santiago Castillo Ramírez Santiago Castillo Ramírez 4Alejandro Reyes Alejandro Reyes 5Gamaliel López-Leal Gamaliel López-Leal 1*
  • 1 Laboratory of Computational Biology and Integrative Viromics, Center for Research in Cellular Dynamics-UAEM, Cuernavaca, Mexico
  • 2 Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Mexico
  • 3 McGill Centre for Microbiome Research, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  • 4 Center for Genomic Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
  • 5 University of Los Andes, Colombia, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Prophages play a crucial role in the genomic diversity of Acinetobacter baumannii, contributing to its pathogenicity and adaptation. In this study, we induced and sequenced seven prophages from five isolates of A. baumannii. These were analyzed with 967 prophages identified from various isolates worldwide, plus 21 genomes of other phages infecting A. baumannii previously reported in NCBI. To have an overview of the populations of the prophages infecting A. baumannii. Our analysis revealed 13 major prophage clusters within the analyzed A. baumannii isolates. Notably, prophages belonging to the Vieuvirus genus were the most prevalent. Specifically, Vieuvirusrelated phages were frequently identified in isolates from Thailand, Mexico, China, and South Korea, which show the geographic prevalence of A. baumannii prophages. This study highlights the importance of considering geographic factors to fully understand prophage diversity and their significant role in the evolutionary dynamics of A.baumannii.

    Keywords: Prophages, Bacteriophages, Acinetobacter baumannii, Vieuvirus, phages

    Received: 04 Nov 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Arellano-Maciel, Hurtado-Ramírez, Camelo-Valera, Castillo Ramírez, Reyes and López-Leal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Gamaliel López-Leal, Laboratory of Computational Biology and Integrative Viromics, Center for Research in Cellular Dynamics-UAEM, Cuernavaca, Mexico

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