Influence of the aminoglycoside antibiotic apramycin on host and phage DNA transcription during infection of S. venezuelae ATCC 10712 with phage Alderaan

Bacterial populations face the constant threat of viral predation exerted by bacteriophages (or phages). In response, bacteria have evolved a wide range of defense mechanisms against phage challenges. Here, we show that aminoglycosides, a well-known class of antibiotics produced by Streptomyces, are potent inhibitors of phage infection. We observed a broad phage inhibition by aminoglycosides. We demonstrate that aminoglycosides do not prevent the injection of phage DNA into bacterial cells but instead block an early step of the viral life cycle. In this context, we used RNA sequencing of S. venezuelae cells infected with phage Alderaan to comparatively investigate the influence of apramycin on phage DNA tanscription at two different time points after inital infection. Overall design: Infection of S. venezuelae ATCC 10712 carrying the empty plasmid pIJLK04 (AprR) with phage Alderaan was comparatively performed in presence and absence of 10 µg/ml apramycin as biological duplicates. From all 4 cultivations, samples were taken 90 min and 180 min after infection ( = 8 samples) by harvesting cells on ice.