Identification and Functional Analysis of Temperate Siphoviridae Bacteriophages ofAcinetobacter baumannii

Acinetobacter baumanniiis an opportunistic pathogen that presents a serious clinical challenge due to its increasing resistance to all available antibiotics. Phage therapy has been introduced recently to treat antibiotic-incurableA. baumanniiinfections. In search for newA. baumanniispecific bacteriophages, 20 clinicalA. baumanniistrains were used in two pools in an attempt to enrich phages from sewage. The enrichment resulted in induction of resident prophage(s) and three temperate bacteriophages, named vB_AbaS_fEg-Aba01, vB_AbaS_fLi-Aba02 and vB_AbaS_fLi-Aba03, all able to infect only one strain (#6597) of the 20 clinical strains, were isolated. Morphological characteristics obtained by transmission electron microscopy together with the genomic information revealed that the phages belong to the familySiphoviridae. The ca. 35 kb genomic sequences of the phages were >99% identical to each other. The linear ds DNA genomes of the phages contained 10 nt cohesive end termini, 52-54 predicted genes, anattPsite and one tRNA gene each. A database search revealed an >99% identical prophage in the genome ofA. baumanniistrain AbPK1 (acc. no. CP024576.1). Over 99% identical prophages were also identified from two of the original 20 clinical strains (#5707 and #5920) and both were shown to be spontaneously inducible, thus very likely being the origins of the isolated phages. The phage vB_AbaS_fEg-Aba01 was also able to lysogenize the susceptible strain #6597 demonstrating that it was fully functional. The phages showed a very narrow host range infecting only twoA. baumanniistrains. In conclusion, we have isolated and characterized three novel temperateSiphoviridaephages that infectA.baumannii.