Abstract
Thermobifida fusca is a moderately thermophilic and cellulolytic actinobacterium. It is of particular interest due to its ability to not only produce a variety of biotechnologically relevant enzymes but also serve as an alternative host for metabolic engineering for the production of valuable chemicals from lignocellulosic agricultural wastes. No bacteriophage that infects T. fusca has been reported, despite its potential impacts on the utilization of T. fusca. In this study, an extremely thermostable bacteriophage P1312 that infects T. fusca was isolated from manure compost. Electron microscopy showed that P1312 has an icosahedral head and a long flexible non-contractile tail, a characteristic of the family Siphoviridae. P1312 has a double-stranded DNA genome of 60,284 bp with 93 potential ORFs. Thirty-one ORFs encode proteins having putative biological functions. The genes involved in phage particle formation cluster together in a region of approximately 16 kb, followed by a segment containing genes presumably for DNA degradation/modification and cell wall disruption. The genes required for DNA replication and transcriptional control are dispersed within the rest of the genome. Phylogenetic analysis of large terminase subunit suggests that P1312 is a headful packaging phage containing a chromosome with circularly permuted direct terminal repeats.
Highlights
Thermobifida fusca, a moderately thermophilic soil actinobacterium, is known for its ability to produce a battery of cellulolytic enzymes (Maki et al, 2009; Adav et al, 2010; Gomez del Pulgar and Saadeddin, 2014)
Isolation and Purification of Phage P1312 Compost collected from several suburban farms was tested for the presence of phages that infect T. fusca according to the method described in Materials and Methods
The tolerance to high temperature indicates that P1312 has adapted to the thermophilic stage of composting as T. fusca
Summary
Thermobifida fusca, a moderately thermophilic soil actinobacterium, is known for its ability to produce a battery of cellulolytic enzymes (Maki et al, 2009; Adav et al, 2010; Gomez del Pulgar and Saadeddin, 2014). Sequence analyses of the genome of T. fusca YX strain suggests that it produces nine cellulases (including endocellulase, exocellulase, and cellobiosidase), at least five hemicellulose hydrolysis-related enzymes and many other glycoside hydrolases (Lykidis et al, 2007). Recent studies demonstrated that T. fusca may secret lignin degradation-promoting enzymes. T. fusca produces a variety of oxidoreductases, such as heme-containing peroxidase (van Blooise et al, 2010) and catalase (Loncar and Fraaije, 2015), which are potentially useful in industries for detoxification and decolorization
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