Jo Dohyeong, Kim Hyeongsoon, Lee Yoona, Kim Jinshil, Ryu Sangryeol
Department of Agricultural Biotechnology and Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology, Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Front Microbiol. 2023 May 12;14:1194435. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1194435. eCollection 2023.
The emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has noticeably increased in recent years worldwide and causes serious public health concerns. As alternatives to antibiotics, bacteriophages are regarded as promising antimicrobial agents. In this study, we isolated and characterized a novel jumbo phage EJP2 that specifically targets AMR strains. EJP2 belonged to the family with an icosahedral head (120.9 ± 2.9 nm) and a non-contractile tail (111.1 ± 0.6 nm), and contained 349,185 bp double-stranded DNA genome with 540 putative ORFs, suggesting that EJP2 could be classified as jumbo phage. The functions of genes identified in EJP2 genome were mainly related to nucleotide metabolism, DNA replication, and recombination. Comparative genomic analysis revealed that EJP2 was categorized in the group of Rak2-related virus and presented low sequence similarity at the nucleotide and amino acid level compared to other jumbo phages. EJP2 had a broad host spectrum against AMR as well as pathogenic and recognized LPS as a receptor for infection. Moreover, EJP2 treatment could remove over 80% of AMR biofilms on 96-well polystyrene, and exhibit synergistic antimicrobial activity with cefotaxime against AMR . These results suggest that jumbo phage EJP2 could be used as a potential biocontrol agent to combat the AMR issue in food processing and clinical environments.
近年来，全球范围内抗菌药物耐药性（AMR）的出现显著增加，并引起了严重的公共卫生问题。作为抗生素的替代品，噬菌体被视为有前景的抗菌剂。在本研究中，我们分离并鉴定了一种新型巨型噬菌体EJP2，它特异性靶向AMR菌株。EJP2属于具有二十面体头部（120.9±2.9纳米）和非收缩性尾部（111.1±0.6纳米）的家族，包含349,185碱基对的双链DNA基因组，有540个推定的开放阅读框，这表明EJP2可被归类为巨型噬菌体。在EJP2基因组中鉴定出的基因功能主要与核苷酸代谢、DNA复制和重组有关。比较基因组分析表明，EJP2被归类为与Rak2相关病毒组，并与其他巨型噬菌体相比，在核苷酸和氨基酸水平上呈现出低序列相似性。EJP2对AMR以及致病性菌株具有广泛的宿主谱，并识别脂多糖作为感染受体。此外，EJP2处理可去除96孔聚苯乙烯上超过80%的AMR生物膜，并与头孢噻肟对AMR表现出协同抗菌活性。这些结果表明，巨型噬菌体EJP2可作为一种潜在的生物防治剂，用于应对食品加工和临床环境中的AMR问题。
