Characterization and whole-genome sequencing of broad-host-range Salmonella-specific bacteriophages for bio-control.

Salmonella Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis), which could cause human disease and death by consuming the contaminated food, is an important zoonotic pathogen. With the rapid increase of antibiotic resistance all over the world, bacteriophage-based bio-control has gradually attracted public attention widely. In order to find a suitable phage treating S. Enteritidis infection, four phages infecting S. Enteritidis were isolated from poultry fecal samples. Host range showed that four phages had a broad-host-range to Salmonella isolates. The morphological analysis illustrated that all of those phages were classified as the Myoviridae family. The one-step growth curve indicated that bacteriophage BPSELC-1 has a short latent period of about 10 min and a large burst size of 500 pfu/cell in comparison to the other three phages. Then phage BPSELC-1 was sequenced and conducted in vitro experiment. The genome of phage BPSELC-1 is 86,996 bp in size and has 140 putative genes containing structure proteins-encoding genes, tRNA genes and DNA replication or nucleotide metabolism genes. Importantly, no known virulence-associated, antibiotic and lysogeny-related genes were identified in the genome of BPSELC-1. In vitro experiment of phage treatment pointed out that the number of viable S. Enteritidis ATCC 13076 was reduced by 5.9×log at MOI of 10 after 4 h. To the best of our knowledge, the phage BPSELC-1 exhibited higher efficiency in S. Enteritidis treatment compared to previous studies. Moreover, it is promising to be used as a broad-spectrum candidate against Salmonella infections in commercial owing to its broad-host-range.