Novel Erwinia persicina Infecting Phage Midgardsormr38 Within the Context of Temperate Erwinia Phages

Prophages or prophage remnants are found in chromosomes of many bacterial strains and might increase the environmental fitness and/or virulence of their hosts. Up to this date, complete genome sequences of only seven temperate bacteriophages infecting bacteria from genusErwinia, comprising of mostly phytopathogenic bacteria, are available publicly. No attempts to analyze the global diversity of temperateErwiniaphages and establish relationships between cultured temperateErwiniaphages and prophages were yet made. In this study, we have isolated, sequenced, and described novelErwinia persicinainfecting bacteriophage "Midgardsormr38" and placed it in the context of previously describedErwiniasp. temperate phages and putative prophages derived from chromosomes of publicly available complete genomes ofErwiniasp. to broaden and investigate diversity of temperateErwiniaphages based on their genomic contents. The study revealed more than 50 prophage or prophage remnant regions in the genomes of differentErwiniaspecies. At least 5 of them seemed to be intact and might represent novel inducibleErwiniaphages. Given the enormous bacteriophage diversity, attempts to establish evolutionary relationships between temperateErwiniaphages revealed at least five different clusters of temperate phages sharing higher degree of similarity.