Isolation and Genomic Study on Two Novel Bacteriophages Infecting a Freshwater Comamonadaceae Bacterium

초록

Recently, environmental bacteriophages have become a center of attention due to its wide abundance, diversity, and potential as bacterial gene carriers. Although phages of diverse environments have been studied, those of freshwater environment have been understudied. In this study, we report two novel phages, P26059A and P26059B, that were isolated from Lake Soyang in South Korea, and lytically infect bacterial strain IMCC26059, a member of the family Comamondaceae, one of the ubiquitous freshwater bacterial groups. The two phages, P26059A and P26059B had different morphologies, each assigned to viral families Siphoviridae and Podoviridae, respectively. The genomes of the two phages were highly distinct from each other with little sequence similarity. Comparative analysis between phage genome sequences and freshwater viral metagenomes showed that the phage populations represented by the two phages exist in the environment with different distribution patterns. Taken together, although the two phages shared a host strain, they showed completely distinctive characteristics from each other in morphological, genomic, and ecological analyses. Considering the abundance of the family Comamonadaceae in freshwater habitats and the rarity of phage isolates infecting this family, the phages and their genomes in this study would be valuable resources for further freshwater virus researches. [Supported by the Mid-Career Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Sciences and ICT (NRF-2016R1A2B2015142).]