Yin Ning Chiang

Bacteriophages are the main vehicle for gene swapping in bacteria, notoriously of pathogenicity islands and antibiotic resistance genes. Chen et al. noticed that the Staphylococcus aureus prophages do not excise from their host's genome until very late in their life cycles (see the Perspective by Davidson). Thus, the phage DNA is amplified while embedded in the bacterial chromosome. The resulting concatemers are processively packed into virus capsules while still integrated in the host chromosome.

Citation: Chiang YN, Tan KJ, Chung H, Lavrynenko O, Shevchenko A, Yew JY (2016) Steroid Hormone Signaling Is Essential for Pheromone Production and Oenocyte Survival. PLoS Genet 12(6): e1006126. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006126 Copyright: © 2016 Chiang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.