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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Aug 23.
Published in final edited form as: Cell Syst. 2016 Jul 14;3(2):199–207. doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2016.06.009

Figure 3. Recoded organisms reduce viral population fitness in microbial communities and select for viral mutations that eliminate UAG codon use.

Figure 3

(A) Schematic of microbial community assays. Phages are infected on a co-culture containing varying ratios of ΔUAG+RF1 and ΔUAGΔRF1, extracted the next day, and propagated on a co-culture with the same cell ratio. Viral populations of λ were quantified by infection on ΔUAG+RF1, and ability of phage MS2 to infect ΔUAGΔRF1 was assayed by plating on ΔUAGΔRF1 containing pFpr. (B) Titers of phage λ viral populations propagated on microbial communities containing cells with standard and alternate genetic codes. Lines are mean of 3 biological replicates for each population. (C) Location of mutations eliminating UAG codon usage in the MS2 genome (Calendar, 2006; Fiers et al., 1976). (D) Relative titers of wild-type and recoded MS2 (MS2rec2) phages infected on ΔUAGΔRF1 with pF or pFpr, which is required for phage infection. Data are mean with standard deviation, n=3. P-values are as follows: * is P ≤ 0.05, ** is P ≤ 0.01, *** is P ≤ 0.001, and **** is P ≤ 0.0001.