Remarkable diversity of Salmonella bacteriophages in swine and poultry

The diversity of 55 Salmonella-specific bacteriophages isolated from 191 fecal samples of poultry and swine from farms located in diverse geographic areas of Spain was determined using lysis profiling, DNA restriction and random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD-PCR). Among them, lysis profiling and RAPD-PCR exhibited 100% typeability and DNA restriction 96%, with discriminatory power of 0.978 (± 0.016), 0.938 (± 0.028) and 0.982 (± 0.013), respectively. The highest concordance (0.974) was that between RAPD-PCR and lysis profiling. None of the bacteriophages isolated from poultry and swine shared any DNA restriction or RAPD-PCR patterns and only two lysis profiles were common to bacteriophages isolated from poultry and swine. The major part of the lysis and RAPD-PCR profiles from the bacteriophages isolated from poultry included only one or two bacteriophages, while those obtained from swine contained more than two bacteriophages. Overall, our results provide evidence of the remarkable diversity exhibited by bacteriophages of Salmonella in farm animals. Moreover, they also show that RAPD-PCR may also be suitable for the pre-screening of the diversity of Salmonella bacteriophages for further use in biocontrol and therapeutic strategies.