Abstract
One of the serious public health concerns is food contaminated with pathogens and their vital activity products such as toxins. Bacillus cereus group of bacteria includes well-known pathogenic species such as B. anthracis, B. cereus sensu stricto (ss), B. cytotoxicus and B. thuringiensis. In this report, we describe the Bacillus phages vB_BcM_Sam46 and vB_BcM_Sam112 infecting species of this group. Electron microscopic analyses indicated that phages Sam46 and Sam112 have the myovirus morphotype. The genomes of Sam46 and Sam112 comprise double-stranded DNA of 45,419 bp and 45,037 bp in length, respectively, and have the same GC-content. The genome identity of Sam46 and Sam112 is 96.0%, indicating that they belong to the same phage species. According to the phylogenetic analysis, these phages form a distinct clade and may be members of a new phage genus, for which we propose the name ‘Samaravirus’. In addition, an interesting feature of the Sam46 and Sam112 phages is the unusual structure of their small terminase subunit containing N-terminal FtsK_gamma domain.
Highlights
Bacteriophages, known as phages, are viruses that infect bacteria
The extracts of single plaques were centrifuged for 10 min at 12,000g, and 50 μ l of the supernatants were transferred into a 48-well plate containing 500 μ l of Lysogeny broth (LB) broth with 5 μ l of B. cereus VKM B-370 culture (OD590 0.6) and incubated for 16 h at 37 ◦ C until optical density decreased
The appearance of Sam[46] and Sam[112] plaques with different morphotypes and the difference in the rate of B. cereus VKM B-370 lysis upon T-type and C-type phage infections are not associated with the formation of lysogens
Summary
Bacteriophages, known as phages, are viruses that infect bacteria. It is well established that phages are the most abundant biological organisms, with a total amount of about 1030–1032 phage particles on the p lanet[1]. Bacteriophages are microbial predators and can be used as a preventive measure or treatment for bacterial infections, which are a serious hazard to both human health and activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry and food industry. This fact offers incredible prospects for R&D projects and drug design based on phages and/ or their lytic proteins (endolysins and virion-associated peptidoglycan hydrolases)[11]. We propose to create a new bacteriophage genus called ‘Samaravirus’ to formally classify these phages
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