The metastable associations of bacteriophages and Erwinia amylovora.

Bacteriophages are often considered as possible agents of biological control of unwanted bacterial populations in medicine, agriculture and food industry. Although the virulent phages can efficiently kill the infected host cells but at the population level phage attack not always leads to the host population collapse but may result in establishment of a more or less stable co-existence. The mechanism of the long-term stabilization of the mixed phage-host cultures is poorly understood.

Two novel Erwinia amylovora bacteriophages, Loshitsa2 and Micant, isolated in Belarus.

The complete genomes of the new Erwinia amylovora bacteriophages Loshitsa2 and Micant are 43,092 bp and 43,028 bp long, respectively, encode 51 putative proteins, and have two tRNA genes. Comparative analysis with representatives of the class Caudoviricetes suggests that bacteriophages Loshitsa2 and Micant are related to LIMElight bacteriophage belonging to the family Autographiviridae and could be proposed to be members of a novel subfamily.

Isolation and characterization of Hena1 - a novel Erwinia amylovora bacteriophage.

Fire blight, caused by plant pathogenic bacterium Erwinia amylovora, is one of the most important diseases of Rosaceae plants. Due to the lack of effective control measures, fire blight infections pose a recurrent threat on agricultural production worldwide. Recently, bacterial viruses, or bacteriophages, have been proposed as environmentally friendly natural antimicrobial agents for fire blight control.

Investigation of O-polysaccharides from bacterial strains of Pseudomonas genus as potential receptors of bacteriophage BIM BV-45.

The structure of potential bacteriophage receptors located on cell walls of Gram-negative bacteria deposited at Belarusian collection of microorganisms was investigated. Studies by 1D and 2D H and C NMR spectroscopy enabled to elucidate the structure of the O-specific polysaccharides (OPS) constituting lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of some Pseudomonas species. The capacity of bacteriophage to adsorb to LPS molecules was tested.