Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages from India, with lytic activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Bacteriophages are being considered as a promising natural resource for the development of alternative strategies against mycobacterial diseases, especially in the context of the wide spread occurrence of drug-resistance amongst the clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis. However, there isnâ t much information documented on mycobacteriophages from India. Here, we report the isolation of 17 mycobacteriophages using M. smegmatis as the bacterial host where 9 phages also lyse M. tuberculosis H37Rv. We present detailed analysis of one of these mycobacteriophage (PDRPv). TEM and PCR analysis (of a conserved region within the TMP gene) shows PDRPv to belong to Siphoviridae family and B1 sub-cluster, respectively. The genome (69110 bp) of PDRPv is circularly permuted double-stranded DNA with ~66% GC content and has 106 open reading frames (ORFs). On the basis of sequence similarity and conserved domains, we have assigned function to 28 ORFs and have broadly categorized them into six groups that are related to replication genome maintenance, DNA packaging, virion release, structural proteins, lysogeny related genes and endolysins. The present study reports the occurrence of novel anti-mycobacterial phages in India and highlights their potential to contribute to our understanding of these phages and their gene products as potential antimicrobial agents.

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