Date of Completion
2021
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Biochemistry
Thesis Type
Honors College
First Advisor
Scott Morrical
Second Advisor
Matthias Brewer
Keywords
Cyanophage = a virus which infects cyanobacteria
Abstract
Cyanobacteria are essential to the biosphere for their primary production of oxygen and their fixation of carbon and nitrogen. The evolution of cyanobacteria in the ocean is controlled by infectious cyanophages. The cyanophage S-RSM4 carries a copy of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), a photosynthetic enzyme homologous to that of its host, Synechococcus sp. W8103. Both G6PDH homologs were cloned and expressed. The viral enzyme was purified, and its kinetic and mechanistic properties were investigated. It is likely that SRSM4 encodes this enzyme to continue production of ribose 5-phosphate and NADPH during infection, independent of the host’s homeostatic constraints. A continued effort to understand this unique parasitism is pertinent to understanding the ocean’s microbiome as a whole.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Babbitz, Zachary J., "Cyanobacteria Phage S-RSM4 Optimization of Pentose Phosphate Pathway via Glucose 6-phosphate Dehydrogenase Homologous to Synechococcus Host" (2021). UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses. 382.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/382