Isolation and characterization of lytic bacteriophage from wastewater

Due to uncontrolled and incorrect use of antibiotics resulted in increase inantibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria. Therefore, search for new therapeutic methods hasbeen accelerated in recent years. Bacteriophage therapy have been the focus of research into combating pathogenic bacteria. Bacteriophage possess an advantages over antibiotics, including low probability of developing bacterial resistance, and significantly lower the chance of disrupting commensal microflora as they are specific to their hosts. In this study, two different sources of the wastewater samples were collected from Trabzon. Bacterial strains were isolated from these samples. These strains were used as host cells for isolation of lytic phagesusing standard methods. A lytic phage capable ofinfectinga variety of bacterial strains were isolated and purified. Each purifiedphages were characterized based on their morphology and host specificity. Inaddition, those strains of bacteria sensitiveto phages were further identified and susceptibility testing was performedusing automated systems. A total of 14 phagesand 14 different phage-sensitive bacterial strains member of Enterobacteriaceae, Moraxellaceae, Pseudomonadaceaeve Alcaligenaceaefamilieswere isolated. Among the isolated phages some havebroadand some havenarrowhost range. The morphologies of all isolated phages were determined by transmission electron microscopy and they areclassified in A, B and C typephagesbased on Bradley'sclassification. They areclassified as Myoviridae, Sphoviridaeve Podoviridae. The phage DNA of ɸssn 21 was extracted and digested with restriction enzymes, and genome size of this phage was determined to be about60 kbp. The burst size of the phage was calculated to be 20 PFU/mL based on the one step growth curve.