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  • First Characterization of a...
    Pan, Lingting; Li, Dengfeng; Sun, Zhitong; Lin, Wei; Hong, Binxin; Qin, Weinan; Xu, Lihua; Liu, Wencai; Zhou, Qin; Wang, Fei; Cai, Ruqian; Qian, Minhua; Tong, Yigang

    Frontiers in microbiology, 02/2022, Volume: 12
    Journal Article

    A unique lytic phage infecting was isolated and identified. phage Ca belongs to the family Autographiviridae, possessing an icosahedral head with a diameter of 55 nm and a short non-contractile tail. Unusually, the burst size of phage Ca of 10,292 ± 1,097 plaque-forming units (PFUs)/cell is much larger than other dsDNA phages reported before. Compared to the genome of the related phage, phage Ca genome contains extra genes including DNA mimic ocr, dGTP triphosphohydrolase inhibitor, endonuclease, endonuclease VII, and HNH homing endonuclease gene. Extraordinarily, the phage developed different sizes of plaques when a single plaque was picked out and inoculated on a double-layer Luria broth agar plate with its host. Furthermore, varied packaging tightness for the tails of phage Ca was observed (tail length: 4.35-45.92 nm). Most of the tails appeared to be like a cone with appendages, some were dot-like, bun-like, table tennis racket handle-like, and ponytail-like. Although the complete genome of phage Ca is 40,286 bp, an incomplete genome with a deletion of a 397-bp fragment, containing one ORF predicted as HNH homing endonuclease gene (HEG), was also found by high throughput sequencing. Most of the genome of the virus particles in large plaques is complete (>98%), while most of the genome of the virus particles in small plaques is incomplete (>98%), and the abundance of both of them in medium-sized plaques is similar (complete, 40%; incomplete, 60%). In an experiment to see if the phage could be protective to brocade carps intramuscularly injected with LY-23 and phage Ca, the protection rate of phage Ca to brocade carp ( Koi) against was 33.38% (0.01 < < 0.05). This study highlights some new insights into the peculiar biological and genomic characteristics of phage.