Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1111/1751-7915.13042
Licence creative commons licence
Title (Primary) A fast and reliable method for monitoring of prophage-activating chemicals
Author Xu, J.; Kiesel, B.; Kallies, R.; Jiang, F.-L.; Liu, Y.; Maskow, T. ORCID logo
Source Titel Microbial Biotechnology
Year 2018
Department UMB
Volume 11
Issue 6
Page From 1112
Page To 1120
Language englisch
Abstract Bacteriophages, that is viruses that infect bacteria, either lyse bacteria directly or integrate their genome into the bacterial genome as so‐called prophages, where they remain at a silent state. Both phages and bacteria are able to survive in this state. However, prophages can be reactivated with the introduction of chemicals, followed by the release of a high number of phage particles, which could infect other bacteria, thus harming ecosystems by a viral bloom. The basics for a fast, automatable analytical method for the detection of prophage‐activating chemicals are developed and successfully tested here. The method exploits the differences in metabolic heat produced by Escherichia coli with (λ+) and without the lambda prophages (λ−). Since the metabolic heat primarily reflects opposing effects (i.e. the reduction of heat‐producing cells by lysis and enhanced heat production to deliver the energetic costs for the synthesis of phages), a systematic analysis of the influence of the different conditions (experimentally and in silico) was performed and revealed anoxic conditions to be best suited. The main advantages of the suggested monitoring method are not only the possibility of obtaining fast results (after only few hours), but also the option for automation, the low workload (requires only few minutes) and the suitability of using commercially available instruments. The future challenge following this proof of principle is the development of thermal transducers which allow for the electronic subtraction of the λ+ from the λ‐ signal.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=20596
Xu, J., Kiesel, B., Kallies, R., Jiang, F.-L., Liu, Y., Maskow, T. (2018):
A fast and reliable method for monitoring of prophage-activating chemicals
Microb. Biotechnol. 11 (6), 1112 - 1120 10.1111/1751-7915.13042