Jakhetia, RichaMarri, ArunaStåhle, JonasWidmalm, GöranVerma, Naresh K2016-03-222016-03-221471-2164http://hdl.handle.net/1885/100859BACKGROUND Shigella flexneri is the major cause of bacillary dysentery in the developing countries. The lipopolysaccharide (LPS) O-antigen of S. flexneri plays an important role in its pathogenesis and also divides S. flexneri into 19 serotypes. All the serotypes with an exception for serotype 6 share a common O-antigen backbone comprising of N-acetylglucosamine and three rhamnose residues. Different serotypes result from modification of the basic backbone conferred by phage-encoded glucosyltransferase and/or acetyltransferase genes, or plasmid-encoded phosphoethanolamine transferase. Recently, a new site for O-acetylation at positions 3 and 4 of RhaIII, in serotypes 1a, 1b, 2a, 5a and Y was shown to be mediated by the oacB gene. Additionally, this gene was shown to be carried by a transposon-like structure inserted upstream of the adrA region on the chromosome. RESULTS In this study, a novel bacteriophage Sf101, encoding the oacB gene was isolated and characterised from a serotype 7a strain. The complete sequence of its 38,742 bp genome encoding 66 open reading frames (orfs) was determined. Comparative analysis revealed that phage Sf101 has a mosaic genome, and most of its proteins were >90% identical to the proteins from 12 previously characterised lambdoid phages. In addition, the organisation of Sf101 genes was found to be highly similar to bacteriophage Sf6. Analysis of the Sf101 OacB identified two amino acid substitutions in the protein; however, results obtained by NMR spectroscopy confirmed that Sf101-OacB was functional. Inspection of the chromosomal integration site of Sf101 phage revealed that this phage integrates in the sbcB locus, thus unveiling a new site for integration of serotype-converting phages of S. flexneri, and determining an alternative location of oacB gene in the chromosome. Furthermore, this study identified oacB gene in several serotype 7a isolates from various regions providing evidence of O-acetyl modification in serotype 7a. CONCLUSIONS This is the first report on the isolation of bacteriophage Sf101 which contains the S. flexneri O-antigen modification gene oacB. Sf101 has a highly mosaic genome and was found to integrate in the sbcB locus. These findings contribute an advance in our current knowledge of serotype converting phages of S. flexneri.This work was supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council and The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to GW.© Jakhetia et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://​creativecommons.​org/​licenses/​by/​4.​0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://​creativecommons.​org/​publicdomain/​zero/​1.​0/​) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.acetylationamino acid sequencebacteriophagesbase sequencechromosome mappingconserved sequencegenes, viralo antigenssequence analysis, dnasequence homology, nucleic acidserotypingshigella flexneriviral proteins2014-08-3010.1186/1471-2164-15-7422016-06-14