Major
Biology
Anticipated Graduation Year
2024
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that has increasingly been a concern with regard to human health given its resistance to multiple antibiotics. To overcome this challenge, Western medicine has renewed interest in an alternative solution, the use of bacteriophages, i.e., phage therapy. Phages have been successfully used to combat P. aeruginosa infections including aortic graft infections, chronic rhinosinusitis infections, chronic lung infections, and urinary tract infections, to name a few. To increase our catalog of P. aeruginosa-infecting phages for future therapeutic use, we have been isolating temperate phages from clinical isolates. Here I present the temperate phage Spongy, induced from P. aeruginosa UMB7777, which was isolated from a catheterized urine sample. P. aeruginosa UMB7777 was predicted to contain three intact prophages by PHASTER. Using PCR primers, I was able to confirm that a single phage had been induced. The prophage sequence is 26,018 nucleotides long and is most similar to the siphovirus Casadabanvirus D3112. Next, I conducted host range assays for Spongy, testing it against 18 urinary P. aeruginosa strains and the ATCC strain. I found that Spongy was capable of lysing 17 of these strains. This suggests that Spongy is an ideal candidate for future investigation and engineering for phage therapy.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Catherine Putonti, Professor, Bioinformatics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Introducing Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage Spongy
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that has increasingly been a concern with regard to human health given its resistance to multiple antibiotics. To overcome this challenge, Western medicine has renewed interest in an alternative solution, the use of bacteriophages, i.e., phage therapy. Phages have been successfully used to combat P. aeruginosa infections including aortic graft infections, chronic rhinosinusitis infections, chronic lung infections, and urinary tract infections, to name a few. To increase our catalog of P. aeruginosa-infecting phages for future therapeutic use, we have been isolating temperate phages from clinical isolates. Here I present the temperate phage Spongy, induced from P. aeruginosa UMB7777, which was isolated from a catheterized urine sample. P. aeruginosa UMB7777 was predicted to contain three intact prophages by PHASTER. Using PCR primers, I was able to confirm that a single phage had been induced. The prophage sequence is 26,018 nucleotides long and is most similar to the siphovirus Casadabanvirus D3112. Next, I conducted host range assays for Spongy, testing it against 18 urinary P. aeruginosa strains and the ATCC strain. I found that Spongy was capable of lysing 17 of these strains. This suggests that Spongy is an ideal candidate for future investigation and engineering for phage therapy.