In Pursuit of New Soil -based Bacteriophages that infect Gordonia rubripertincta : Discovering Evergreen

Overview

One option to mitigate antibiotic resistance is bacteriophage therapy. Phages, a type of virus, are genetically diverse and globally plentiful. Yet, few have been discovered. This two-phase study isolated, sequenced and annotated a phage that infects Gordonia rubripertincta, an opportunistic bacterium. Evergreen22 was discovered after a lengthy procedure of isolation, purification, amplification, and DNA extraction. Another novel phage —KayGee—, was auto -annotated using DNA Master, which indicated 73 genes. Following the 14-guiding principles recommended by Turner and colleagues (2021), each of the 73 genes for KayGee was manually refined using an additional 8 bioinformatic tools. The annotatio n also revealed that KayGee has two rare genes only seen in one other CT-cluster phage called Pons, adding to the phage taxonomy knowledge -base. The annotation was sent to PhagesDB for addition to the metagenomic database. All three hypotheses were supported. A second wet -lab temperature study showed the optimal infection temperature of Evergreen22 to be 35 °C, implying it would be efficacious in humans (body temperature is 37°C). The study compared Evergreen22 and KayGee on plaque morphology, annotations and the temperature study, and showed the phages to be lytic phages that do not produce toxins. By using the genomic and biosynthetic components of the host bacteria, lytic phages multiply rapidly and cause the bacteria to lyse. Both phages are suitable for phage therapy. Furthermore, both phages can be used in bioremediation, therapeutic phage cocktails, and food preservation. Future studies should conduct one - step growth curves for both phages to determine the burst size of each.