Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Salmonella Phage vB_SalP_TR2

Yuting Shang; Qifan Sun; Hanfang Chen; Qingping Wu; Moutong Chen; Shuanghong Yang; Mingzhu Du; Fei Zha; Qinghua Ye; Jumei Zhang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.664810

Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Salmonella Phage vB_SalP_TR2

Front Microbiol. 2021 Jun 21:12:664810. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.664810. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yuting Shang^{1

2}, Qifan Sun^{1

3}, Hanfang Chen¹, Qingping Wu¹, Moutong Chen¹, Shuanghong Yang², Mingzhu Du², Fei Zha², Qinghua Ye¹, Jumei Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Food Science and Technology, National Engineering Research Center for Functional Foods, Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety, Joint International Research Laboratory on Food Safety, School of Food Science and Technology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.
³ School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Salmonella is a widely distributed foodborne pathogen. The use of Salmonella phages as biocontrol agents has recently gained significant interest. Because the Salmonella genus has high diversity, efforts are necessary to identify lytic Salmonella phages focusing on different serovars. Here, five Salmonella phages were isolated from soil samples, and vB_SalP_TR2 was selected as a novel phage with high lytic potential against the host Salmonella serovar Albany, as well as other tested serovars, including Corvallis, Newport, Kottbus, and Istanbul. Morphological analyses demonstrated that phage vB_SalP_TR2 belongs to the Podoviridae family, with an icosahedral head (62 ± 0.5 nm in diameter and 60 ± 1 nm in length) and a short tail (35 ± 1 nm in length). The latent period and burst size of phage vB_SalP_TR2 was 15 min and 211 PFU/cell, respectively. It contained a linear dsDNA of 71,453 bp, and G + C content was 40.64%. Among 96 putative open reading frames detected, only 35 gene products were found in database searches, with no virulence or antibiotic resistance genes being identified. As a biological control agent, phage vB_SalP_TR2 exhibited a high temperature and pH tolerance. In vitro, it lysed most S. Albany after 24 h at 37°C with multiplicities of infection of 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, and 100. In food matrices (milk and chicken meat), treatment with phage vB_SalP_TR2 also reduced the number of S. Albany compared with that in controls. These findings highlighted phage vB_SalP_TR2 as a potential antibacterial agent for the control of Salmonella in food samples.

Keywords: Salmonella; bacteriophage; biocontrol; biological characteristic; genomic analysis.