Below is a summary of the abstract you submitted. Presenting author(s) is shown in bold.
If any changes need to be made, you can modify the abstract or change the authors.
You can also download a .docx version of this abstract.
If there are any problems, please email Dan at dar78@pitt.edu and he'll take care of them!
This abstract was last modified on March 15, 2024 at 2:39 p.m..
Bacteriophages, also called phages, are viruses studied for their ecology and epidemiology. The characterization of novel Mycobacterium bacteriophages may advance the development of therapeutics for Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections. Students at Howard University from the SEA-Phages 2023-2024 class isolated the bacteriophages Dice, Olak, Orfeu, Pacifista, Ricotta, and Selr12. These bacteriophages were purified using standard procedures from enriched soil samples collected from the Howard University environment. Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2 155 served as host . All six phages are of the Siphoviridae morphotype. Illumina sequencing revealed that the sample phages belonged to cluster B and subcluster B1. The genome lengths for all the phages are between 68337bp and 69100 bp, with GC content ranging from 66.4% to 66.5%. Annotation was carried out using PECAAN, HHpred, and BLASTp analyses with a cutoff E-value of 10−4. All six phages had unique tail lengths: Dice 294.375 nm, Olak 309.375 nm, Orfeu 313.125 nm, Pacifista 315.8 nm. Ricotta 302.5 nm and Selr12 312.5 nm with an average capsid diameter ranging from 69-73.8 nm. The genome organization across all 6 phages were consistent with other members of the sub cluster.
Key words: Mycobacteriophages, Soil, Mycobacterium smegmatis and Siphoviridae