Isolation and characterization of a Thermus lytic bacteriophage from Tengchong Rehai hot spring

Abstract:

Abstract:[Objective] Genus Thermus represents an ancient descendant within the domain of Bacteria. This research was focused on the isolation and characteristics of Thermus bacteriophages from Tengchong Reihai hot spring. [Methods] Bacteriophage was isolated from Tengchong Rehai hot springs by double-layer plate method, and further characterized by morphology, temperature, pH and organic solvent effection on phage production, DNA restriction endonuclease digestion and protein composition analysis.[Results] One lytic bacteriophage was isolated from Tengchong hot spring. It’s host strain Thermus sp.TC10 belonged to genus Thermus (16S rRNA gene accession number GU119889). This phage has a hexagonal head (67 nm in diameter) and an extremely long tail (837 nm in length and 10 nm in width). The optimum temperature and pH value for production of virons were about 65℃ and pH7.6, respectively. The phage was not sensitive to chloroform. The differences between this phage and the other two Thermus Siphoviridae phages P23-45 and P74-26, which were isolated form Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, demostrated it was a novel bacteriaphage and was denoted as TTSP10 (Tengchong Thermus Siphoviridae phage).