Phage PaBG-A Jumbo Member of an Old Parasite Family.

Bacteriophage PaBG is a jumbo Myoviridae phage isolated from water of Lake Baikal. This phage has limited diffusion ability and thermal stability and infects a narrow range of strains. Therefore, it is hardly suitable for phage therapy applications. However, the analysis of the genome of PaBG presents a number of insights into the evolutionary history of this phage and jumbo phages in general. We suggest that PaBG represents an ancient group distantly related to all known classified families of phages.