Isolation and characterization of a bacteriophage with an unusually large genome from the Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma, USA

In this study we present a bacteriophage isolated from the Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge (GSP) that is shown to have a genome size of 340 kb, unusually large for a bacterial virus. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of the virion showed this to be a Myoviridae, the first reported to infect the genus Halomonas. This temperate phage, PhigspC, exhibits a broad host range, displaying the ability to infect two different Halomonas spp. also isolated from the GSP. The phage infection process demonstrates a high level of tolerance towards temperature, pH and salinity; however, free virions are rapidly inactivated in water unless supplemented with salt. We show that susceptibility to osmotic shock is correlated with the density of the packaged DNA (rho(pack)). Lysogens of Halomonas salina GSP21 were detrimental to host fitness at 10% salinity, but the lysogen was able to grow faster than the wild type at 20% salinity. From these results we propose that the extensive genome of PhigspC may encode environmentally relevant genes (ERGs); genes that are perhaps not essential for the phage life cycle but increase host and phage fitness in some environmental conditions.