The sophisticated antibiotic resistance mechanism of Pseudomonas aeruginosa has urged the development of alternative antibacterial strategies. Phage therapy has been proven successful for the treatment of multidrug-resistant infections. In this study, we reported two virulent P. aeruginosa phages, vB_PaeM_SCUT-S1 (S1) and vB_PaeM_SCUT-S2 (S2), which were characterized at morphological, genomic, and proteomic levels. Phages S1 and S2 were assigned to the Myoviridae family. The genome sequencing showed that the genome size of Phage S1 was 66,046 bp and that of Phage S2 was 94,434 bp. The phylogenetic tree indicated that the two phages were distantly related to each other and were classified in the genera Pbunavirus and Pakpunavirus respectively. Thirty-one proteins were identified for each phage by mass spectrometry and were used to substantiate the function of the predicted coding genes. The two phages inhibited the growth of P. aeruginosa strain PAO1 at low multiplicity of infection levels and had good performance both on preventing biofilm formation and eradicating preformed biofilms. They were also stable over a wide range of temperature and pH values, supporting their potential use in the treatment of P. aeruginosa infections.
Keywords: Myoviridae; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; biofilm; complete genome; lysis kinetics; one-step growth curve; phage therapy; proteomics.