Characterization and Comparative Genomics Analysis of two Bacillus megaterium lytic bacteriophages

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1 Genetic Department, Faculty of Agriculture., Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
2 Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre, Academy of Science, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
3 Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
4 Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture, Minia University, Minia, Egypt
5 Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Virology Laboratory, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27171v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Agricultural Science, Bioinformatics, Genomics, Microbiology, Virology
Keywords
Bacillus megaterium, Bacteriophage, Phylogenetic analysis, Comparative genomics
Copyright
© 2018 Sharaf et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Sharaf A, Obornik M, Hammad A, El-Afifi S, Marei E. 2018. Characterization and Comparative Genomics Analysis of two Bacillus megaterium lytic bacteriophages. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27171v1

Abstract

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies provide unique possibilities for the comprehensive assessment of the environmental diversity of bacteriophages. Several Bacillus bacteriophages have been isolated, but very few Bacillus megaterium bacteriophages have been characterized. In this study, we describe the biological characteristics, whole genome sequences, and their annotations for two new isolates of the B. megaterium bacteriophages (BM5 and BM10), which were isolated from Egyptian soil samples. Growth analyses indicated that the phages BM5 and BM10 have a shorter latent period (25 and 30 minutes respectively) and a smaller burst size (103 and 117 PFU respectively), in comparison to that which is typical for Bacillus phages. The genome sizes of the phages BM5 and BM10 were 165,031 bp and 165,213 bp, respectively, with a modular organization. Bioinformatic analyses of these genomes enabled the assignment of putative functions to 97 and 65 putative ORFs, respectively. Comparative analysis of the BM5 and BM10 genome structures, in conjunction with other B. megaterium bacteriophages, revealed relatively high levels of sequence and organizational identity. Both genomic comparisons and phylogenetic analyses support the conclusion that the sequenced phages (BM5 and BM10) belong to different sub-clusters (L5 and L7 respectively), within the L-cluster, and display different lifestyles (lysogenic and lytic respectively). Moreover, sequenced phages encode proteins associated with Bacillus pathogenesis. In addition, BM5 does not contain any tRNA sequences, whereas BM10 genome codes for 17 tRNAs.

Author Comment

This poster is a part of a conference proceedings