Diversity of phage integrases in Enterobacteriaceae: development of markers for environmental analysis of temperate phages.

Viruses are the most abundant biological entities in aquatic systems. Temperate bacteriophages have enormous influences on microbial diversity, genetic exchange and bacterial population dynamics. However, development of molecular tools for their detection in the environment has been problematic. The integrase gene is used here as a molecular marker to analyse the diversity of temperate bacteriophages in a population of freshwater bacteria. Interrogation of the GenBank database revealed 32 non-cryptic enteric phage integrase sequences, leading to the development of a suite of 11 degenerate primer sets specific to the extant sequences elucidated. Application of these primer sets to enterobacterial isolates recovered from a freshwater pond and the temperate phages induced from them revealed a number of diverse integrase genes, including novel integrase-like sequences not represented in the databases. This highlights the potential of utilizing the integrase gene family as a marker for phage diversity.