Bacteriophages (phages) are increasingly being explored as therapeutic agents to combat bacterial diseases, including Clostridium difficile infections. Therapeutic phages need to be able to efficiently target and kill a wide range of clinically relevant strains. While many phage groups have yet to be investigated in detail, those with new and useful properties can potentially be identified when...

Studying phage codon adaptation is important not only for understanding the process of translation elongation, but also for reengineering phages for medical and industrial purposes. To evaluate the effect of mutation and selection on phage codon usage, we developed an index to measure selection imposed by host translation machinery, based on the difference in codon usage between all host genes ...

A total of 33 Rhizobium meliloti bacteriophages were studied. Of those, 21 were isolated in northern France from field soil in which Medicago sativa L. was grown. The other 12 phages were obtained by UV light and mitomycin C induction from 46 R. meliloti strains. Rhizobiophages were characterized by their morphology, host range, serological properties, restriction endonuclease patterns, DNA-DNA...

Bacteriophages of methanotrophic bacteria have been found in 16 out of 88 studied samples (underground waters, pond water, soil, gas and oil installation waters, fermentor cultural fluids, bacterial paste, and rumen of cattle) taken in different geographic zones of the Soviet Union. Altogether, 23 phage strains were isolated: 10 strains that specifically lysed only Methylosinus sporium strains,...

Bacteriophages (phages) carrying Shiga toxin genes constitute a major virulence attribute in enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). Several EHEC outbreaks have been linked to food. The survival of such strains in different foods has received much attention, while the fate of the mobile Shiga toxin-converting phages (Stx phages) has been less studied. We have investigated the stability of an...

The comparative analysis of five completely sequenced Streptococcus thermophilus bacteriophage genomes demonstrated that their diversification was achieved by a combination of DNA recombination events and an accumulation of point mutations. The five phages included lytic and temperate phages, both pac site and cos site, from three distinct geographical areas. The units of genetic exchange were ...

We report the genetic organisation of six prophages present in the genome of Lactococcus lactis IL1403. The three larger prophages (36-42 kb), belong to the already described P335 group of temperate phages, whereas the three smaller ones (13-15 kb) are most probably satellites relying on helper phage(s) for multiplication. These data give a new insight into the genetic structure of lactococcal ...

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a growing issue in aquaculture, and phage therapy offers an alternative approach to the use of antibiotics. Phages for can be isolated, identified enumerated using Double-Layer Agar (DLA) technique. While some phages form large well-defined plaques that when plated with DLA technique, produce small turbid difficult detect count. A phage, Aeromonas phages-T65 , ...

in this study, 90 internal organ samples of poultry with symptoms of colibacillosis were obtained from maragheh poultry farms in east azerbaijan, iran. in total, 70 bacterial isolates were confirmed as escherichia coli (e. coli) strains using standard biochemical tests, and antibiotic sensitivity was determined by the disk diffusion method. antibiotics used in this study included ampicillin, pe...

UNLABELLED Bacteria living in physically structured habitats are exposed heterogeneously to both resources and different types of phages. While there have been numerous experimental approaches to examine spatially distributed bacteria exposed to phages, there is little theory to guide the design of these experiments, interpret their results, or expand the inferences drawn to a broader ecologica...