Expanding the complex: phylogenomic insights, proposal of sp. nov. and reclassification of two species.

A novel species was isolated as a contaminant in viral transport media at the District of Columbia Department of Forensic Sciences Public Health Laboratory. Phylogenomic and biochemical analyses of the isolate determined that it represented a novel species within . Related strains in public genome databases suggested that this novel species is associated with clinically acquired infections, similar to closely related .

Improving high-throughput techniques for bacteriophage discovery in multi-well plates.

Bacteriophages (also called phages) are viruses of bacteria that have numerous applications in medicine, agriculture, ecology, and molecular biology. With the increasing interest in phages for their many uses, it is now especially important to make phage discovery more efficient and economical. Using the host Mycobacterium smegmatis mc155, which is a model organism for phage discovery research and is closely related to important pathogens of humans and other animals, we investigated three procedures that are an integral part of phage discovery: enrichment of environmental samples, phage isolation and detection (which can also be used for host range determination), and phage purification.