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Genotyping, morphology and molecular characteristics of a lytic phage of Neisseria strain obtained from infected human dental plaque

Journal of Microbiology volume 52, pages 609–618 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

The lytic bacteriaphage (phage) A2 was isolated from human dental plaques along with its bacterial host. The virus was found to have an icosahedron-shaped head (60±3 nm), a sheathed and rigid long tail (∼175 nm) and was categorized into the family Siphoviridae of the order Caudovirales, which are dsDNA viral family, characterised by their ability to infect bacteria and are nonenveloped with a noncontractile tail. The isolated phage contained a linear dsDNA genome having 31,703 base pairs of unique sequence, which were sorted into three contigs and 12 single sequences. A latent period of 25 minutes and burst size of 24±2 particles was determined for the virus. Bioinformatics approaches were used to identify ORFs in the genome. A phylogenetic analysis confirmed the species inter-relationship and its placement in the family.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia

    Ahmed N. Aljarbou & Mohamad Aljofan

  2. Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University, 3600, Monash, Australia

    Mohamad Aljofan

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  1. Ahmed N. Aljarbou
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  2. Mohamad Aljofan
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Correspondence to Ahmed N. Aljarbou.

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Aljarbou, A.N., Aljofan, M. Genotyping, morphology and molecular characteristics of a lytic phage of Neisseria strain obtained from infected human dental plaque. J Microbiol. 52, 609–618 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12275-014-3380-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12275-014-3380-1

Keywords

  • Neisseria sp.
  • Siphoviridae
  • lytic phage A2
  • human dental plaques
  • contigs
  • phylogenetic relationships