Isolation and characterization of lytic bacteriophages from sewage water

G.H. Tan, M.S. Nordin and A.B. Napsiah

Abstract

Bacteriophages are virus-like particle that infect bacteria and can be found in all reservoirs populated by bacterial hosts, such as soil, sewage, sea water or even in the intestine of animals. Phages are very specific to the bacteria, thus they are suitable to be used as ‘bacteria-killers’, and subsequently they can be applied as biological control agents for the plant pathogens. From this study, a total of eight bacteriophages have been successfully isolated by using three different strains of Escherichia coli (TG , ER2738 and BL2 ) as a host. They were characterized based on the morphology of the plaque forming, nucleic acid analysis and protein profile. Current study also showed that these phages might be in the range of lytic phages because they are similar to T-series bacteriophages. However, there was no lysogenic phage found in these sewage samples.

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