Inorganic
polyphosphate (
polyP) is a linear
polymer of
orthophosphate residues. It is reported to be present in all life forms. Experimental studies showed that
polyP plays important roles in bacterial durability and virulence. Here we investigated the relationships of
polyP with bacterial durability and virulence theoretically. Bacterial lifestyle, environmental persistence,
virulence factors (VFs), and species evolution are all included in the analysis. The presence of seven genes involved in
polyP metabolism (ppk1, ppk2, pap, surE, gppA, ppnK, and ppgK) and 2595 core VFs were verified in 944 bacterial reference
proteomes for distribution patterns via HMMER.
Proteome size and VFs were compared in terms of gain and loss of
polyP pathway. Literature mining and phylogenetic analysis were recruited to support the study. Our analyzes revealed that the presence of
polyP metabolism is positively correlated with bacterial
proteome size and the number of virulence genes. A potential relationship of
polyP in bacterial lifestyle and environmental durability is suggested. Evolutionary analysis shows that
polyP genes are randomly lost along the phylogenetic tree. In sum, based on our theoretical analysis, we confirmed that bacteria with
polyP metabolism are associated with high environmental durability and more VFs.