ISSN: 0973-7510
E-ISSN: 2581-690X
A phage showing lytic activity against strains of Brucella abortus was characterized for morphology, structural proteins and genome fingerprints. In electron microscopy, the phage showed presence of an icosahedral head and a short non contractile tail and was found indistinguishable from the family Podoviridae. Structural protein profiling of the phage by SDS-PAGE revealed nine proteins ranging from 16-114 kDa. The phage was found to possess double stranded DNA as genetic material. Genomic fingerprinting was carried out by Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) and Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD). Out of 19 restriction endonucleases used, the phage genome was sensitive to digestion with 15 enzymes yielding distinct and highly reproducible banding patterns. Molecular size of phage genome ranged from 56 to 81 kbp. The in silico comparison of RFLP patterns with reference phage Tbilisi and Weybridge revealed significant difference in the genomic sequence. The RAPD finger prints produced by 12 primers were distinct and highly reproducible. The generated finger prints can be use in high resolution brucellaphage diversity studies.
Brucellaphage, Restriction fragment length polymorphism, Random amplified polymorphic DNA
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