Enterococcus faecalis Countermeasures Defeat a Virulent Picovirinae Bacteriophage.

ABSTRACT: Enterococcus faecalis is an opportunistic pathogen that has emerged as a major cause of nosocomial infections worldwide. Many clinical strains are indeed resistant to last resort antibiotics and there is consequently a reawakening of interest in exploiting virulent phages to combat them. However, little is still known about phage receptors and phage resistance mechanisms in enterococci. We made use of a prophageless derivative of the well-known clinical strain E. faecalis V583 to isolate a virulent phage belonging to the Picovirinae subfamily and to the P68 genus that we named Idefix. Interestingly, most isolates of E. faecalis tested-including V583-were resistant to this phage and we investigated more deeply into phage resistance mechanisms. We found that E.

SUBMITTER: Lossouarn J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6356687 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature