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Significance Many phages use a contractile tail to inject their genomes into the host bacterial cell. These complex assemblages are capable of specifically recognizing the cell surface, contracting upon cell binding, penetrating the cell wall, and creating a channel in the cell membrane through which the phage genome can pass. Remarkably, bacteria have co-opted phage tails and adapted them into protein-injecting nanomachines directed at other bacteria and even eukaryotic cells. Here, we elucidate the composition and assembly pathway of the baseplate of the contractile-tailed phage Mu. Our work demonstrates that the “simple” Mu-like baseplates are the only baseplate type encoded in phage genomes integrated within bacteria, and these baseplates are thus the most likely evolutionary precursors of the tail-derived bacterial nanomachines.

Baseplate assembly of phage Mu: Defining the conserved core components of contractile-tailed phages and related bacterial systems