AUTHOR=Feyereisen Marine , Mahony Jennifer , Neve Horst , Franz Charles M. A. P. , Noben Jean-Paul , O’Sullivan Tadhg , Boer Viktor , van Sinderen Douwe 

TITLE=Biodiversity and Classification of Phages Infecting Lactobacillus brevis

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.02396

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2019.02396

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Lactobacillus brevis</italic> is a lactic acid bacterium that is known as a food and beverage spoilage organism, and more specifically as a beer-spoiler. Phages of <italic>L. brevis</italic> have been described, but very limited data is available regarding temperate phages of <italic>L. brevis</italic>. Temperate phages may exert benefits to the host, while they may also be employed to combat beer spoilage. The current study reports on the incidence of prophage sequences present in nineteen distinct <italic>L. brevis</italic> genomes. Prophage induction was evaluated using mitomycin C exposure followed by genome targeted-PCR, electron microscopy and structural proteome analysis. The morphological and genome sequence analyses revealed significant diversity among <italic>L. brevis</italic> prophages, which appear to be dominated by members of the <italic>Myoviridae</italic> phage family. Based on this analysis, we propose a classification of <italic>L. brevis</italic> phages into five groups.</p>