Sellvam, Dharmela
(2012)
Isolation And Characterization Of Possible New Bacteriophage From Goat Faeces.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
Bacteriophages or phages are group of viruses that would infect and lyse
bacteria. Phages entities are one of the most abundant life form on earth with the total
estimation number of 1031 phages. Until today, only ~6,000 types of phages have been
discovered and majority of them are dsDNA tailed phages. The use of phages as a
treatment for bacterial infections has regained the attention due to the emergence of
antibiotic multi-resistant bacterial strains. In addition, the diverse and enormous
phages also contribute to the bacteriophage therapy. A potentially new bacteriophage
was isolated from goat feces which could add to the number of phages discovered so
far and could be used in phage therapy. The isolated phage is a tail phage with similar
morphology to other tail phages, yet it has unique tail structure. Other phages have
stiff tail structures but this isolated phage has a very flexible tail structure. Besides
that, the newly isolated phage has capsid measures 50-57nm in diameter and tail
measures 107nm in length with double stranded DNA genome. These characteristics
make the isolated phage could be grouped into the family of Siphoviridae. The
isolated phage shows quite different physiochemical characteristics as compared to a
common tailed phage. The isolated phage has wide range of temperature and pH
tolerance for its survival compared to other tail phage such as T4, with temperature of
700C and pH 5-11. Proteomic and genomic analysis
show differences between the isolated phage when compared to common phage.
Genome size estimation of the isolated phage is around 30kbp – 40kbp. Based on the
morphology, physiochemical, proteomic and genomic analysis results, the isolated
phage could be a new addition to the list of viruses in International Committee on
Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) database.
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