Bacteriophage application to control the contaminated water with Shigella

Shigella is one of the most important waterborne and foodborne pathogens around the world. Emergence of antibiotic-resistant Shigella has made the development of alternatives to conventional antibiotics necessary. In this study, a virulent Myoviridae bacteriophage, pSs-1 was isolated from environmental water in South Korea and showed infectivity to S. flexneri as well as S. sonnei strains. One-step growth analysis showed that pSs-1 has a short latent period (25 min) and a large burst size (97 PFU/cell). According to the genomic analysis, pSs-1 contains 164,999 bp of genome with a G + C content of 35.54% and it is considered as a member of the T4-like bacteriophage group. These results showed that pSs-1 may have potential as a biocontrol agent instead of conventional antibiotics for shigellosis.