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Published on: January 1, 2016
Antibacterial properties of Acinetobacter baumannii phage Abp1 endolysin (PlyAB1)
Guangtao Huang1,2, Xiaodong Shen3, Yali Gong4
1State Key Laboratory of Trauma, Burns and Combined Injury, Institute of Burn Research, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China. haitao3140@sina.com.
Background:
Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as one of the most important hospital-acquired pathogens in the world, because of its resistance to almost all available antibiotic drugs. Endolysins from phages are attracting increasing interest as potential antimicrobial agents, especially for drug-resistant bacteria. We previously isolated and characterized Abp1, a virulent phage targeting the multidrug-resistant A. baumannii strain, AB1.
Methods:
To evaluate the antimicrobial potential of endolysin from the Abp1 phage, the endolysin gene plyAB1 was cloned and over-expressed in Escherichia coli, and the lytic activity of the recombinant protein (PlyAB1) was tested by turbidity assessment and bacteria counting assays.
Results:
PlyAB1 exhibits a marked lytic activity against A. baumannii AB1, as shown by a decrease in the number of live bacteria following treatment with the enzyme. Moreover, PlyAB1 displayed a highly specific lytic effect against all of the 48 hospital-derived pandrug-resistant A. baumannii isolates that were tested. These isolates were shown to belong to different ST clones by multilocus sequence typing.
Conclusions:
The results presented here show that PlyAB1 has potential as an antibiotic against drug-resistant A. baumannii.
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