Isolation, characterization and analysis of bacteriophages from the haloalkaline lake Elmenteita, Kenya

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215734
• Publication Date: 2019-04-25T17:38:23Z
• Authors: Juliah Khayeli Ak...; Manfred Rohde; Christine Rohde; Boyke Bunk; Cathrin Spröer; Hamadi Iddi Boga; Hans-Peter Klenk; Johannes Wittmann
• Keywords: Siphoviridae

As a step towards better understanding of diversity and biology phages their hosts in haloalkaline Lake Elmenteita, were isolated from sediment samples overlying water using indigenous bacteria as hosts. 17 seemingly different diverse morphotypes with dimensions partly exhibiting remarkably unusual ultrastructures revealed by transmission electron microscopy. 12 clonal phage isolates further characterized. Infection capability the was optimum at 30–35°C alkali condition pH 10–12. Structural protein profiles restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses patterns distinct for each type. Complete nucleotide sequences vB-VmeM-32, vB_EauS-123 vB_BhaS-171 genomes varied size 30,926–199,912 bp G + C content between 36.25–47.73%. A range 56–260 potential open reading frames identified annotated. The results showed that other confirmed presence extreme environment Elmenteita. deposited German Collection Microorganisms Cell Cultures three uploaded to NCBI GenBank.