Isolation and Characterization of Lytic Bacteriophage Against Common Pathogenic Bacteria

Regarding their specificity, bacteriophages have been widely investigated to combat bacterial infections. Phage therapy is proposed as a promising alternative antibacterial agent. The present study was conducted to isolate and characterize bacteriophages against clinical bacterial isolates from sewage water. Recovery of phage was high from the processed sewage water (66%) against tested bacterial hosts. Plaque assay revealed four different plaques morphology against Escherichia coli with high lytic activity. In contrast, one small morphology plaques were appeared against Staphylococcus aureus with low lytic activity. The mean phage titer of phage isolates was 7.7x109 and 2.9x1011 plaque forming unit/ml for S. aureus and E. coli respectively. The isolated phages showed a narrow host range when tested against 19 different bacterial isolates. The electron microscopy revealed that EC1 Phage has the typical morphology of the family Podoviridae, order Caudovirales. The isolated bacteriophages need to be further characterized at the molecular level and tested in vivo to be used in one of the bacteriophage applications.