Table 1.

Roles of the main CC398-borne prophages in bacterial virulence.

Prophages	Characteristics	Putative roles	References
φ3 and Sa3int variants	β-converting, IEC, putative factors involved in bacterial virulence, biofilm formation, fitness, stress adaptation and genome plasticity	Immune escape	[21,22,56,57,74]
		Host colonization, invasion	[22,24,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68]
		Long-term host colonization	[57,69,72,73]
		Virulence in Caenorhabditis elegans	[29]
MR11-like variants	Putative factors involved in bacterial virulence, biofilm formation, fitness, stress adaptation and genome plasticity	Host colonization, invasion	[22,24,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68]
		Immune escape, when associated to φ3	[22,69,70,71]
φtarP-Sa1int and φtarP-Sa9int	Alternative glycosyltransferase TarP	WTAs modification, immune escape	[78]
StauST398-2Pro and StauST398-3Pro		Adhesion to fibronectin/fibrinogen—modulation of adhesion genes expression, cell invasion, virulence in rats (infectious endocarditis)	[28]