TraitMech

TraitMech › GENOMICS

Tab system

traitmech:000413 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A phage defense system in which an organism or resident prophage possesses a Tab virion-assembly-inhibition locus that expresses the Tab tail-assembly-blocking protein, blocks assembly of invading phage tails, prevents infectious virion formation, and protects the bacterial community from phage spread.

Trait evidence (5)

  • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x
    a type of anti-phage defence that interferes with the virion assembly pathway of invading phages

    Patel et al. define the Tab-associated anti-phage defence as interference with the virion assembly pathway of invading phages.

  • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x
    The protein that mediates this defence, which we call Tab

    Patel et al. name the protein mediating this prophage defence Tab.

  • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x
    blocks assembly of the phage tail, thus preventing formation of infectious virions

    Patel et al. show that Tab blocks phage-tail assembly and thereby prevents production of infectious virions.

  • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x
    there is no release of infectious phage progeny, and the bacterial community is thereby protected from a phage epidemic

    Patel et al. connect Tab-mediated inhibition of infectious phage release to protection of the bacterial community from a phage epidemic.

  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mdmparis/defense-finder-models/afb0e5a8b466be53586b13266f5d38d98c3ac268/List_system_article.md
    | Tab | 10\.1038/s41467-024-45892-x | Anti-phage defence through inhibition of virion assembly |

    The pinned DefenseFinder article registry maps the named Tab system to the Patel et al. virion-assembly-inhibition paper. The pinned HMM inventory (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mdmparis/defense-finder-models/afb0e5a8b466be53586b13266f5d38d98c3ac268/Liste_hmm_system.md) and pinned rules table (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mdmparis/defense-finder-models/afb0e5a8b466be53586b13266f5d38d98c3ac268/DefenseFinder_rules.tsv) do not list Tab, so this row is name-to-paper evidence rather than model-component evidence.

Tab blocks phage virion assembly

Conservative system-level sketch linking a Tab prophage-associated locus to inhibition of invading phage tail assembly, blocked infectious virion formation, and Tab system possession.

NONMECHANISTIC · The graph captures Tab as a prophage-encoded virion-assembly-inhibition system without asserting the full host range, full sensitive-phage range, Tab counter-defence specificity, or profile-to-component DefenseFinder modeling.

Tab blocks phage virion assembly Interactive directed graph showing evidence-backed causal relationships for Tab system.

Edge evidence

  • Tab prophage locus enables Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition RO:0002327

    A prophage-associated tab locus expresses the Tab protein that mediates virion-assembly inhibition.

    • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x The protein that mediates this defence, which we call Tab Patel et al. name Tab as the protein mediating this prophage anti-phage defence.
  • Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition mitigates phage tail assembly METPO:2007407

    Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition blocks assembly of invading phage tails.

    • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x blocks assembly of the phage tail, thus preventing formation of infectious virions Patel et al. connect Tab to blockade of phage-tail assembly.
  • Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition mitigates infectious virion formation METPO:2007407

    By blocking tail assembly, Tab-mediated defence prevents formation and release of infectious phage progeny.

    • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x there is no release of infectious phage progeny, and the bacterial community is thereby protected from a phage epidemic Patel et al. report no infectious phage progeny release under Tab-mediated defence.
  • Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition confers Tab system METPO:2007700

    Virion assembly inhibition realizes the Tab system trait.

    • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x Tab-mediated inhibition of virion assembly provides a new type of anti-phage defence Patel et al. frame Tab-mediated virion assembly inhibition as a new anti-phage defence type.
  • Tab system is a phage defense system rdfs:subClassOf

    Tab system possession is a phage-defense-system trait.

    • DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x a type of anti-phage defence that interferes with the virion assembly pathway of invading phages Patel et al. place Tab in anti-phage defence by virion assembly pathway interference.

Provenance

Identifier source
TraitMech local identifier
Definition source
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x

Parent traits (1)

Synonyms (1)

  • Tab RELATED_SYNONYM · DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45892-x

kg-microbe context

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Discussions and Knowledge Gaps (1)

Open questions attached to this trait. Seeded by just knowledge-gap-scan and curated; see the corpus-wide index.

Resolve Tab host breadth, sensitive-phage breadth, counter-defence specificity, and DefenseFinder HMM/rules coverage before minting narrower Tab mechanism children.

KNOWLEDGE GAP OPEN tab-defensefinder-model-gap · raised by codex · 2026-09-27

Attached to causal_graphs#tab_blocks_virion_assembly

Patel et al. support Tab as a prophage-encoded anti-phage defence protein that blocks invading phage-tail assembly and prevents release of infectious phage progeny, while the pinned DefenseFinder article registry names a Tab system. The pinned DefenseFinder HMM inventory and rules table have no Tab rows, and the evidence does not yet resolve host breadth, target-phage breadth, counter-defence specificity, or profile-to-activity modeling.

Evidence

Curation history

  1. · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex

    Minted Tab system as a DOI-backed GENOMICS TraitRecord under phage defense system after an ignored-and-hidden duplicate review found no exact live TraitMech, METPO, history, or prior proposal record; kept the graph at prophage-locus and virion-assembly-inhibition level because the pinned DefenseFinder article row is not backed by pinned HMM or rules rows; the replacement placeholder is reserved in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v290.