Isolation and characterization of a Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteriophage with a very limited host range.

A Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteriophage, phi PLS743, with extremely limited host range has been isolated. It belongs to the virus family Podoviridae, morphological type C1, and possesses a head diameter of 45 nm. The phage has a buoyant density in CsCl of 1.516 g/cm3, and its mass is 45 x 10(6) daltons. The phage particles are composed of double-stranded DNA (49.9 mol% G + C; 42.4 kilobase pairs) and 11 structural proteins (66% by weight). The major head protein, P5, has a Mr of 34,500. The DNA is not cut by SalI or XhoI restriction endonucleases, but is cut by PvuII (1 site), KpnI and BglII (2 sites), PvuI (4 sites), BamHI (7 sites), EcoRI (9 sites), and HindIII (12 sites). A restriction endonuclease map is presented.