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Updated: May 28, 2026

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Rapid genetic characterization of a novel Enterobacteria phage and determination of its host recognizing genes
Huanhuan Jiang1, Sheng Wang, Cun Li
1State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Beijing 100071, China.
Abstract:
We isolated a novel Enterobacteria phage IME08 from hospital sewage, then confirmed it was a double-stranded DNA phage by digesting its genetic material with DNase I, RNase A and several restriction endonucleases respectively. BLAST results of random fragments generated by a random PCR cloning method revealed that it belonged to T4-like virus. We subsequently determined the host recognizing genes (g37 and g38) sequence with a PCR-based "genome jumping" protocol based on highly conserved region at 5' terminus of g37 from four other T4-like Bacteriophages (T4, JS98, T2 and K3). These molecular biological methods enabled us to readily characterize the bacteriophage and efficiently determine the sequence of the genes of interest based on very limited conserved sequence information.
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