Evaluation of Potential ARG Packaging by Two Environmental T7-Like Phage during Phage-Host Interaction.

ABSTRACT: The increase in antimicrobial resistance is a threat to both human and animal health. The transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) via plasmids has been studied in detail whereas the contribution of bacteriophage-mediated ARG transmission is relatively little explored. We isolated and characterized two T7-like lytic bacteriophages that infected multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli hosts. The morphology and genomic analysis indicated that both phage HZP2 and HZ2R8 were evolutionarily related and their genomes did not encode ARGs. However, ARG-like raw reads were detected in offspring sequencing data with a different abundance level implying that potential ARG packaging had occurred. PCR results demonstrated that six fragments of genes (qnrS, cmlA, tetM, b

SUBMITTER: Liu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7598189 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature