AUTHOR=Cubo María Teresa , Alías-Villegas Cynthia , Balsanelli Eduardo , Mesa Dany , de Souza Emanuel , Espuny María Rosario 

TITLE=Diversity of Sinorhizobium (Ensifer) meliloti Bacteriophages in the Rhizosphere of Medicago marina: Myoviruses, Filamentous and N4-Like Podovirus

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00022

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2020.00022

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p>Using different <italic>Sinorhizobium meliloti</italic> strains as hosts, we isolated eight new virulent phages from the rhizosphere of the coastal legume <italic>Medicago marina</italic>. Half of the isolated phages showed a very narrow host range while the other half exhibited a wider host range within the strains tested. Electron microscopy studies showed that phages M_ort18, M_sf1.2, and M_sf3.33 belonged to the <italic>Myoviridae</italic> family with feature long, contractile tails and icosaedral head. Phages I_sf3.21 and I_sf3.10T appeared to have filamentous shape and produced turbid plaques, which is a characteristic of phages from the <italic>Inoviridae</italic> family. Phage P_ort11 is a member of the <italic>Podoviridae</italic>, with an icosahedral head and a short tail and was selected for further characterization and genome sequencing. P_ort11 contained linear, double-stranded DNA with a length of 75239 bp and 103 putative open reading frames. BLASTP analysis revealed strong similarities to <italic>Escherichia</italic> phage N4 and other N4-like phages. This is the first report of filamentous and N4-like phages that infect <italic>S. meliloti.</italic></p>