ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Phage Biology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1537073
This article is part of the Research TopicBacteriophages, Prophages, and Their Products: Regulating Bacterial PopulationsView all 12 articles
Tracking Tripartite Interaction Dynamics: Isolation, Integration, and Influence of Bacteriophages in the Paraburkholderia-Dictyostelium discoideum Symbiosis System
Provisionally accepted
- 1Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, United States
- 2University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
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Bacteriophages influence interactions between bacterial symbionts and their hosts by exerting parasitic pressure on symbiont populations and facilitating bacterial evolution through selection, gene exchange, and prophage integration. Host organisms also modulate phage-bacteria interactions, with host-specific contexts potentially limiting or promoting phage access to bacterial symbionts or driving alternative phenotypic or evolutionary outcomes. To better elucidate tripartite phage-bacteriahost interactions in real-time, we expanded the Dictyostelium discoideum-Paraburkholderia symbiosis system to include Paraburkholderia-specific phages. We isolated six environmental Paraburkholderia phages from soil samples using a multi-host enrichment approach and identified a functional prophage in one bacterial symbiont. These phages, which target Paraburkholderia strains from all three known amoeba symbiont species, exhibit diverse plaquing characteristics and virion morphologies. Using this system, we treated several Paraburkholderia-infected amoeba lines with phage isolates active against each infectious symbiont strain. In some cases, phages reduce symbiont infection prevalence and/or mitigated host fitness impacts, while in others, no significant effects were observed. Phages were also capable of persisting in symbiont-infected amoeba populations over multiple culture transfers. This study highlights the variability of within-host phage-symbiont outcomes and lays the groundwork for exploring long-term tripartite dynamics. Furthermore, our results suggest intriguing mechanisms that may shape differential phage treatment outcomes, presenting valuable avenues for future investigation.
Keywords: bacteriophage1, symbiosis2, Dictyostelium discoideum3, amoeba4, Paraburkholderia5 co-culture Phage isolates represented Pb433 infections in Paranha treated lines also didn't significantly change over symbiont-specific
Received: 29 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 DiSalvo, Maness, Braun, Tran and Hofferkamp. 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: Susanne DiSalvo, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, United States
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