Abstract
A large and diverse group of bacteriophages has been termed ‘SPO1-like viruses’. To date, molecular data and genome sequences are available for Bacillus phage SPO1 and eight related phages infecting members of other bacterial genera. Many additional bacteriophages have been described as SPO1-related, but very few data are available for most of them. We present an overview of putative ‘SPO1-like viruses’ and shall discuss the available data in view of the recently proposed expansion of this group of bacteriophages to the tentative subfamily Spounavirinae. Characteristics of SPO1-related phages include (a) the host organisms are Firmicutes; (b) members are strictly virulent myoviruses; (c) all phages feature common morphological properties; (d) the phage genome consists of a terminally redundant, non-permuted dsDNA molecule of 127–157 kb in size; and (e) phages share considerable amino acid homology. The number of phages isolated consistent with these parameters is large, suggesting a ubiquitous nature of this group of viruses.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Richard Calendar, University of California at Berkeley, USA, and Dr. Charles Stewart, Rice University, Houston, USA, for helpful suggestions and Dr. Rudi Lurz, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany for some electron micrographs.
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The ‘O’ in the name SPO1 probably represents the letter ‘O’ from the city of Osaka, where SPO1 was isolated. In the published literature, the number zero ‘0’ has occasionally been used instead, making it necessary to use both forms of the name for literature searches and database mining.
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Klumpp, J., Lavigne, R., Loessner, M.J. et al. The SPO1-related bacteriophages. Arch Virol 155, 1547–1561 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-010-0783-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-010-0783-0