Dharmela Sellvam

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 diamete...

The numbers of discovered phages are just a minute fraction of its population in the biosphere. However, the advancement of genome sequencing technology as NGS (next generation sequencing) provides opportunity to identify more complete phage genomes data that feasible to register them in ICTV (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses). A tailed phage species designated as Escherichia phage YD-2008.s was discovered and the complete genome was sequenced and deposited in NCBI (National Centre for Biotechnology Information) database with GenBank accession No. KM896878.1

Malaysia is one of the countries that are loaded with mega biodiversity which includes microbial communities. Phages constitute the major component in the microbial communities and yet the numbers of discovered phages are just a minute fraction of its population in the biosphere. Taking into account of a huge numbers of waiting to be discovered phages, a new bacteriophage designated as YD-2008.s was successfully isolated using ATCC 11303 as the host. YD-2008.s poses icosahedral head measured at 57nm in diameter with a long non-contractile flexible tail measured at 107nm; proving the phage as one of the members of family under the order of . Genomic sequence analyses revealed YD-2008.s genome as linear dsDNA of 44,613 base pairs with 54.6% G+C content. Sixty-two open reading frames (ORFs) were identified on YD-2008.s full genome, using bioinformatics annotation software; Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology (RAST). Among the ORFs, twenty-eight of them code for functional prote...