Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

Isolation, characterization and analysis of bacteriophages from the haloalkaline lake Elmenteita, Kenya

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Hans-Peter Klenk

Downloads


Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

© 2019 Akhwale et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. As a step towards better understanding of diversity and biology of phages and their hosts in haloalkaline Lake Elmenteita, phages were isolated from sediment samples and overlying water using indigenous bacteria as hosts. 17 seemingly different phages of diverse morphotypes with different dimensions and partly exhibiting remarkably unusual ultrastructures were revealed by transmission electron microscopy. 12 clonal phage isolates were further characterized. Infection capability of the phages was optimum at 30–35C and in alkali condition with optimum at pH 10–12. Structural protein profiles and restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses patterns were distinct for each of the phage type. Complete nucleotide sequences of phages vB-VmeM-32, vB_EauS-123 and vB_BhaS-171 genomes varied in size from 30,926–199,912 bp and G + C content of between 36.25–47.73%. A range of 56–260 potential open reading frames were identified and annotated. The results showed that the 12 phages were distinct from each other and confirmed the presence and diversity of phages in extreme environment of haloalkaline Lake Elmenteita. The phages were deposited at the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures and three of their genomes uploaded to NCBI GenBank.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Akhwale JK, Rohde M, Rohde C, Bunk B, Sproer C, Boga HI, Klenk H-P, Wittmann J

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: PLoS One

Year: 2019

Volume: 14

Issue: 4

Online publication date: 25/04/2019

Acceptance date: 08/04/2019

Date deposited: 13/05/2019

ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203

Publisher: Public Library of Science

URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215734

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215734


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Share