Back

Phage-Mediated Iron Acquisition by Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Khosravi, A.; Gupta, A.; Hajfathalian, M.; Burgener, E. B.; Rodriguez, S. P.; Milla, C. E.; Bollyky, P. L.

2026-01-26 microbiology
10.64898/2026.01.26.700923 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Iron acquisition is critical to bacterial growth and pathogenesis. Here, we describe a previously unrecognized mechanism by which the major human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa acquires iron through a unique partnership with bacteriophages (phages). Pf is a filamentous phage that infects P. aeruginosa and is associated with chronic infections. We reveal that Pf contributes to P. aeruginosa pathogenesis by promoting iron uptake. We demonstrate that Pf phage is highly induced under iron-deplete growth conditions and that once induced, Pf virions directly bind and locally concentrate free iron. Pf-bound iron is more efficiently utilized by P. aeruginosa than unbound iron, enhancing bacterial growth. We further demonstrate that Pf-mediated iron acquisition depends on type IV pili, which facilitate Pf attachment and confers strain selective uptake of phage-bound iron, providing a competitive fitness advantage in polymicrobial settings. Together, these findings identify an unrecognized role for filamentous phages in mediating iron acquisition and reveal a novel phage-bacterium partnership that operates through selective kin cooperation.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.