Community post

Anushila Chatterjee (University of Colorado School of Medicine) and colleagues published a new paper in mBio investigating Enterococcus faecalis interactions with a virulent phage. They highlight roles for polysaccharide antigens and DNA mismatch repar in phage infection, and show that infection alters quorum sensing and polymicrobial competition gene expression. They conclude that phages can influence complex microbial behaviour that could have important collateral effects on communities.