Item

Evidence for the presence of Legionella bacteriophages in environmental water samples.

Lammertyn, Elke
Vande Voorde, Johan
Meyen, Eef
Maes, Liesbeth
Anné, Jozef
Citations
Altmetric:
Abstract

The existence and preliminary characterization of bacteriophages active against the Gram-negative human pathogen Legionella pneumophila, the causative agent of a very severe form of pneumonia, are reported. Four phages belonging to the family of the Myoviridae were isolated from various fresh water environments, and preliminary characterization showed that these crude preparations infect exclusively bacteria belonging to the genus Legionella. Standard phage amplification, purification, and characterization procedures were, however, not efficiently applicable making more research into these novel phages and their mechanism of infection necessary. The existence of Legionella bacteriophages is very promising for future applications such as the development of novel molecular tools, the design of new detection and typing methods, and the bioremediation of this environmental pathogen.

Description
Date
2008-07-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Chapter title
Publication type
Peer reviewed scientific article
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Bacteriophages, Culture Media, DNA, Viral, Fresh Water, Humans, Legionella, Legionella pneumophila, Lysogeny, Myoviridae, Species Specificity
Citation
Topic(s)
Related project
Embedded videos