Engineered Fluorescent E. Coli Lysogens Allow Live-Cell Imaging of Functional Prophage Induction Triggered Inside Macrophages

Half of the bacteria in the human gut microbiome are lysogens containing integrated prophages, which may activate in stressful immune environments. Although lysogens are likely to be phagocytosed by macrophages, whether prophage activation occurs or influences the outcome of bacterial infection remains unexplored. To study the dynamics of bacteria-phage interactions in living cells-in particular, the macrophage-triggered induction and lysis of dormant prophages in the phagosome-we adopted a tripartite system where murine macrophages engulf E. coli, which are lysogenic with an engineered bacteriophage lambda, containing a fluorescent lysis reporter. Pre-induced prophages are capable of lysing the host bacterium and propagating infection to neighboring bacteria in the same phagosome. A non-canonical pathway, mediated by PhoP, is involved with the native lambda phage induction inside phagocytosed E. coli. These findings suggest two possible mechanisms by which induced prophages may function to aid the bactericidal activity of macrophages.