Yersinia Phages and their Novel Proteins

The Yersinia species are responsible for plague disease. These host bacteria are infected by their specific phages. The association of phage-host and their genetic interaction within the living bacterial cell are imparting various beneficial characteristics to its host helping it for retaining suitable characteristics for adaptation as well as evolution. The understanding of Yersinia phages can help us to know how they influence their host functional characteristics. The Yersinia phages can be understood by analyzing their hypothetical protein sequences within its genome. Our study included 102 hypothetical proteins from 6 different Yersinia phage genomes. The function predictions in 48 hypothetical proteins and 3-D structures were predicted for 5 protein sequences using PS2 server. The probable function prediction was done by using Bioinformatics web tools like CDD-BLAST, INTERPROSCAN, PFAM and COGs by searching sequence databases for the presence of orthologous enzymatic conserved domains in the hypothetical sequences. This study identified many proteins, whose roles are yet to be discovered in Yersinia phage or their bacterium. These results can be used for understanding the role of Yersinia phages in co-evolution of their hosts.