Qimron and his colleagues set out to understand how all 56 proteins found in T7, a particularly
virulent phage that infects Escherichia coli bacteria, contribute to its functioning.
Prophage origin of a virulent phage appearing in fermentations of Lactobacillus casei S-1.
The plaques were clear, indicating the presence of virulent phages as suggested by Sechaud et al.
It was found that the
virulent phages were able to lyse the host bacterium by developing clear circular zones with average plaque diameter of 5-7mm.
As the phage filtrates were not purified, more species of phages may have been present, including temperate phages that did not lyse the bacteria or virulent phages with longer latency periods and therefore did not have the time to produce plaques during the 24 h incubation period.
As the enriched phage filtrates produced plaques in all the bacterial strains isolated, this study provides promising results on the efficacy of virulent phages in infecting bacteria present in sea turtle environments.
However, the phage is highly host specific and is not effective against other clinical isolates included in our study which suggests that more
virulent phages are yet to be discovered in the future.
The team has a phage bank with more than 100 phages, and from that they selected four
virulent phages (known to the researchers as Sano, Salvo, Prado and Paz) based on their physical and genetic characteristics.
Microbiologists, immunologists, and other biomedical specialists present
virulent phages as antibacterial agents and survey their main therapeutic applications.