Comparative Analysis of 37 Bacteriophages.

Members of the genus are ubiquitous in the environment and the multiple-drug resistant species is of significant clinical concern. This clinical relevance is currently driving research on bacterial viruses infecting , in an effort to implement phage therapy and phage-derived antimicrobials. Initially, a total of 42 phage genome sequences were available in the international nucleotide sequence databases, corresponding to a total of 2.87 Mbp of sequence information and representing all three families of the order and a single member of the . A comparative bioinformatics analysis of 37 phages revealed that they form six discrete clusters and two singletons based on genomic organisation and nucleotide sequence identity. The assignment of these phages to clusters was further supported by proteomic relationships established using OrthoMCL. The 4067 proteins encoded by the 37 phage genomes formed 737 groups and 974 orphans. Notably, over half of the proteins encoded by the phages are of unknown function. The comparative analysis and clustering presented enables an updated taxonomic framing of these clades.