Darya Antonova’s project received support from the Russian Science Foundation

Based on the results of the 2024 Russian Science Foundation (RSF) grant competition «Conducting fundamental and exploratory scientific research by small individual scientific groups,» a project by scientists from the Research and Education Center «Nanobiotechnology» was supported. The project is dedicated to the «search for membrane vesicles of viral origin in a giant bacteriophage that does not form a phage nucleus.» A team of young researchers, led by 4th-year PhD student and recipient of the Russian President's Scholarship, Darya Aleksandrovna Antonova, will spend two years investigating the infection process of the giant bacteriophage AR9, which infects the bacterium *Bacillus subtilis*.

«Membrane structures inside bacteria are a great rarity. It is even more unusual when they form during infection by bacteriophages. Recently, we discovered that such structures are formed during infection by a distant relative of AR9 — the bacteriophage phiKZ. In this case, the phage's DNA molecule is housed inside the membrane vesicles, protected from the hostile contents of the bacterial cell. Currently, the formation of such structures has only been observed in phiKZ-like phages. However, the discovery of similar membrane vesicles in other phage families could reveal a common ancient mechanism for the early stage of infection in giant bacteriophages,» said D.A. Antonova.