Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages against Burkholderia species

Abstract Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) is a potent nosocomial pathogen mainly encountered in immunocompromised, cystic fibrosis and chronic granulomatous patients. They are innately resistant to the broad spectrum of antibiotics and thus need an alternative therapeutic approach, one of which is phage therapy. Therefore, our study aimed at isolating the bacteriophages against Burkholderia spp isolated from non-cystic fibrosis patients and characterizing these bacteriophages for therapeutic intervention. Initially, the hospital and environmental effluents were collected and screened for the presence of bacteriophages against Burkholderia spp. The obtained phages were then enriched and characterized by RAPD. Host range activity of phages were evaluated, and the cocktails of phages were screened for their synergistic effect. The morphology of the bacteriophages was examined using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Four bacteriophages were isolated and characterised against three different strains of Burkholderia. These, four phages were found to be strain specific and they did not show lytic activity against other species of Gram-negative isolates during host range analysis. Cocktail ;lassay –denoted that cocktail A showed broad host range activity against multiple species of Burkholderia. None of the phages showed any banding pattern for RAPD assay. TEM analysis revealed that phages belonged to Straboviridae family. The isolated phages against Burkholderia spp were found to be strain specific and active against Burkholderia cenocepacia, Burkholderia vietnamiensis and Burkholderia pseudomultivorans. This study has been a modest attempt to isolate bacteriophages against different genomovars of Burkholderia. The lytic activity of phages observed against the host determines the narrow spectrum activity of these phages and supports the theory of bacteriophage being one of the best alternatives for personalised clinical treatment of bacterial infections.