Four novel Curtobacterium phages isolated from environmental samples

Despite Curtobacterium spp. often being associated with the plant phyllosphere, i.e., the areal region of different plant species, only one phage targeting a member of the genus Curtobacterium has been isolated so far. In this study, we isolated four novel plaque-forming Curtobacterium phages, Reje, Penoan, Parvaparticeps, and Pize, with two novel Curtobacterium strains as propagation hosts. Based on the low nucleotide intergenomic similarity (<32.4%) between these four phages and any phage with a genome sequence in the NCBI database, we propose the establishment of the four genera, "Rejevirus", "Pizevirus", "Penoanvirus", and "Parvaparticepsvirus", all in the class of Caudoviricetes.