Celia Ferriol-González
I2SysBio (Universitat de València - CSIC)
Environmental and Biomedical Virology group
Celia Ferriol-González is a PhD candidate in the Environmental and Biomedical Virology research group at the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (Universitat de València – CSIC), led by Prof. Pilar Domingo-Calap. Her PhD research focuses on the determinants of the host tropism in phages that infect capsular hosts, particularly Klebsiella spp. Her work contributes to our understanding of the implications of these determinants for phage-host dynamics in microbial populations, as well as for the development of phage-based applications.
Affiliations: (1). Instituto de Biología Integrativa de Sistemas, Universitat de València-CSIC, Paterna (Spain)
Capsulated bacterial hosts usually have a broad capsule diversity, representing the major determinant for phage infectivity. Phage receptor-binding proteins (RBPs) recognize surface receptors, as the bacterial capsule. This interaction is essential to initiate the infection process. Here, we designed an experimental evolution approach to explore host range adaptation in a diverse 12-phage community interacting with a Klebsiella spp. population containing 39 distinct capsular types. Phages included were diverse in genomic and host range terms. Our findings revealed RBP-evolution as a key driver for host range modification. Generalist phages had highly evolvable RBPs that accumulated non-synonymous mutations modulating their host range. On the contrary, specialist phages acquired fewer mutations, maintaining their narrow host range. Additionally, recombination between co-infecting closely related phages promoted rapid host range modification through RBP swapping. This study advances our understanding of phage host range evolution and provides new insights for optimizing phage-based applications.