Complete Genome Sequence of Burkholderia cenocepacia Phage Mica

Burkholderia cenocepacia is a multidrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogen known to colonize patients with chronic granulomatous disease and cystic fibrosis. Here, we describe Burkholderia phage Mica, which is predicted to be a lysogenic myophage based on the similarity of its structural proteins to Enterobacteria phage P2 and Burkholderia phage KL3. ABSTRACT Burkholderia cenocepacia is a multidrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogen known to colonize patients with chronic granulomatous disease and cystic fibrosis. Here, we describe Burkholderia phage Mica, which is predicted to be a lysogenic myophage based on the similarity of its structural proteins to Enterobacteria phage P2 and Burkholderia phage KL3.

B acteria within the genus Burkholderia are known to cause disease in plants.
Burkholderia cenocepacia is also a multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterium within the B. cepacia complex (BCC) group of opportunistic pathogens that colonizes patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic granulomatous disease (1,2). The investigation into Burkholderia phage may yield an effective biocontrol agent that can aid in the treatment of afflicted patients as well as protect crop plants.
Mica has a genome sequence of 43,707 bp with a coding density of 94% and a G1C content of 62%. A cohesive end site (cos) with a 13-bp overhang was predicted by PhageTerm (20). Analysis predicted 69 protein-coding genes, of which 43 were assigned putative functions. Mica was predicted to be a lysogenic myophage based on presence of an integrase and the similarity of its structural proteins to phage P2 (GenBank accession no. NC_001895) and Burkholderia phage KL3 (NC_015266). BLASTn indicated that phage Mica shares 47% similarity to myophage phiRSP (MH252365). The lysis cassette genes were found in a cluster and consist of i/o-spanins, a signal anchor release (SAR) endolysin lysozyme, and a class II holin. An ice nucleation protein is predicted through functional analysis, which may act as an accessory phytopathogen virulence factor in the lysogen (21).
Data availability. The genome sequence of phage Mica was deposited under GenBank accession no. MT701586 and BioSample accession no. SAMN14609637. The BioProject accession no. is PRJNA222858, and the SRA accession no. is SRR11558335.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (award no. EF-0949351 and DBI-1565146). Additional support came from the Center for Phage Technology (CPT), an Initial University Multidisciplinary Research Initiative supported by Texas A&M University and Texas AgriLife, and from the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics (https://cpt.tamu.edu/).
We are grateful for the advice and support of the CPT staff. This announcement was prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements for BICH464 Phage Genomics, an undergraduate course at Texas A&M University.