Proteus mirabilis is an enterobacterium that causes catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) due to its ability to colonize and form crystalline biofilms on the catheters surface. CAUTIs are very difficult to treat, since biofilm structures are highly tolerant to antibiotics. Phages have been used widely to control a diversity of bacterial species, however, a limited number of phag...

Thirteen phages were isolated from lysogenic cultures of Staphylococcus epidermidis from a clinical laboratory and used to type 223 clinical isolates of this organism. The 18 phages isolated in The Netherlands were used to type these same cultures. No correlation was observed between phage type, biotype, or clinical source of isolation. At phage concentrations of 100 times the routine test dilu...

The efficiencies of the various methods used for phage concentration have been compared. The two-phase concentration method (with polyethylene glycol and dextran sulfate) gave maximal recoveries of infectivity for coliphages of the T-even and T-odd series and for ribonucleic acid phages and single-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid phages. Precipitation of phages by acid gave high yields when appli...

Phage therapy may become a complement to antibiotics in the treatment of chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. To design efficient therapeutic cocktails, the genetic diversity of the species and the spectrum of susceptibility to bacteriophages must be investigated. Bacterial strains showing high levels of phage resistance need to be identified in order to decipher the underlying mechanisms....

Shiga toxin-converting bacteriophages (Stx phages) are involved in the pathogenicity of some enteric bacteria, such as Escherichia coli O157:H7. Stx phages are released from their bacterial hosts after lytic induction and remain free in the environment. Samples were analyzed for the presence of free Stx phages by an experimental approach based on the use of real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR), wh...

The use of phages is an attractive option to battle antibiotic resistant bacteria in certain bacterial infections, but the role of phage ecology in bacterial infections is obscure. Here we surveyed the phage ecology in septicemia, the most severe type of bacterial infection. We observed that the majority of the bacterial isolates from septicemia patients spontaneously secreted phages active aga...

A lysogen of a wild-type strain of Escherichia coli K-12 carrying a heat-inducible lambda-phi80 hybrid prophage was induced to yield transducing phages carrying all of the structural genes of the tryptophan operon. The presence or absence of elements of the trp regulatory region was determined by examining the effects of lambda genes N and cI on trp gene expression. The phages were further char...

With the emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria the use of bacteriophages (phages) is gaining renewed interest as promising anti-microbial agents. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize phages from human fecal samples. Three new coliphages, ɸAPCEc01, ɸAPCEc02 and ɸAPCEc03, were isolated. Their phenotypic and genomic characteristics, and lytic activity against biofilm, and in ...

Ralston, Doris J. (University of California, Berkeley) and Mary McIvor. Lysis-from-without of Staphylococcus aureus strains by combinations of specific phages and phage-induced lytic enzymes. J. Bacteriol. 88:676-681. 1964-Several typing phages, adsorbed in sufficient concentrations to their homologous propagating strains, altered the cell surface so as to render the cells sensitive to rapid an...

Shiga toxin 2 (Stx2) from the foodborne pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 is encoded on a temperate bacteriophage. Toxin-encoding phages from C600::933W and from six clinical E. coli O157:H7 isolates were characterized for PCR polymorphisms, phage morphology, toxin production, and lytic and lysogenic infection profiles on O157 and non-O157 serotype E. coli. The phages were found to be highly va...