Authors: Sierra M Mellor, Madilyn Brandt, Nathaniel Eberhart, Samuel Flor, Julianne H Grose
Mentors: Julianne Grose
Insitution: Brigham Young University
Continued use of antibiotics has driven the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which cause infections that prove difficult to treat. Therefore, it is crucial that alternative treatments for bacterial infections are developed. One such promising method, known as phage therapy, utilizes viruses that infect bacteria. However, compared to the high abundance of bacteriophages, relatively few have been isolated and sequenced, with little known about their gene products. Here we have isolated two phages, SummitAcademy and AJGecko, against the host bacteria Gordonia rubripertincta. Gordonia belongs to the Actinobacteria class containing many pathogenic bacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and so analysis of SummitAcademy and AJGecko can provide insight into the evolution of this family. Genomic comparison of conserved genes between SummitAcademy and other Gordonia phages identifies 14 hypothetical proteins as unique to SummitAcademy. Subsequent liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) of CsCl-purified SummitAcademy confirms expression of many predicted gene products, verifying the annotation. Several peptides generated through mass spectrometry also provide evidence for extending predicted start sites of gene products. Further characterization of virion proteins and gene products of SummitAcademy can add to the overall knowledge of this cluster of phages and potential phage therapies against Gordonia or related infections.