Two Novel Lytic Bacteriophages Infecting Enterococcus spp. Are Promising Candidates for Targeted Antibacterial Therapy

Abstract

The rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance is of major concern globally. Among the most worrying pathogenic bacteria are vancomycin-resistant enterococci. Phage therapy is a highly promising method for controlling enterococcal infections. In this study, we described two virulent tailed bacteriophages possessing lytic activity against Enterococcus faecalis and E. faecium isolates. The SSsP-1 bacteriophage belonged to the Saphexavirus genus of the Siphoviridae family, and the GVEsP-1 bacteriophage belonged to the Schiekvirus genus of Herelleviridae. The genomes of both viruses carried putative components of anti-CRISPR systems and did not contain known genes coding for antibiotic-resistance determinants and virulence factors. The conservative arrangement of protein-coding sequences in Saphexavirus and Schiekvirus genomes taken together with positive results of treating enterococcal peritonitis in an animal infection model imply the potential suitability of GVEsP-1 and SSsP-1 bacteriophages for clinical applications.

Characterization of Bacteriophage cd2, a Siphophage Infecting Carnobacterium divergens and a Representative Species of a New Genus of Phage

“…5B ), shows that when LV13 is used as the host strain, phage cd2 has a latent period of ~60 min. The burst size of phage cd2 was determined to be ~28 PFU/infected cell, which is smaller than the reported burst sizes for several of the enterococcal phages (which range from 60 to 350 PFU/infected cell) that share a similar morphology to cd2 ( 34 – 38 ). On the other hand, phage cd2’s burst size is comparable to what has been reported for several Lactobacillus phages ( 39 – 41 ).…”

Bacteriolytic Potential of Enterococcus Phage iF6 Isolated from “Sextaphag®” Therapeutic Phage Cocktail and Properties of Its Endolysins, Gp82 and Gp84

“…The chromosome of iF6 is a dsDNA molecule with a length of 156,592 bp and two direct terminal repeats of 2108 bp each ( Figure 5 and Figure 8 c). Similar organization of both virions and genomes has been described in phages infecting enterococci [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ].…”

A preliminary biocontrol study: Isolation, characterization and genomic analysis of lytic phage TE against Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae

“…syringae , which previously isolated from fruit trees in Erzurum and neighbouring provinces and maintained in the microorganism culture collection at Yeditepe University, Faculty of Genetics and Bioengineering Microbiology Institute (Gormez et al., 2013), was cultured on Nutrient Agar (NA; Sigma Aldrich Canada Co. or Millipore) plates at 28°C. The bacterial working culture was grown in Nutrient Broth (NB; Sigma Aldrich Canada Co. or Millipore) at 28°C with agitation at 150 rpm (Liu et al., 2021; Tkachev et al., 2022). The bacteria used in the host range study were from Yıldız Technical University Molecular Biology and Genetic, Microbiology Laboratory.…”