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Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani

Modern agriculture is expected to face an increasing global demand for food while also needing to comply with higher sustainability standards. Therefore, control of crop pathogens requires new, green alternatives to current methods. Potatoes are susceptible to several bacterial diseases, with infect...

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Autores principales: Carstens, Alexander B., Djurhuus, Amaru M., Kot, Witold, Jacobs-Sera, Deborah, Hatfull, Graham F., Hansen, Lars H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30423804
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v10110621
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author Carstens, Alexander B.
Djurhuus, Amaru M.
Kot, Witold
Jacobs-Sera, Deborah
Hatfull, Graham F.
Hansen, Lars H.
author_facet Carstens, Alexander B.
Djurhuus, Amaru M.
Kot, Witold
Jacobs-Sera, Deborah
Hatfull, Graham F.
Hansen, Lars H.
author_sort Carstens, Alexander B.
collection PubMed
description Modern agriculture is expected to face an increasing global demand for food while also needing to comply with higher sustainability standards. Therefore, control of crop pathogens requires new, green alternatives to current methods. Potatoes are susceptible to several bacterial diseases, with infections by soft rot Enterobacteriaceae (SRE) being a significant contributor to the major annual losses. As there are currently no efficient ways of combating SRE, we sought to develop an approach that could easily be incorporated into the potato production pipeline. To this end, 46 phages infecting the emerging potato pathogen Dickeya solani were isolated and thoroughly characterized. The 46 isolated phages were grouped into three different groups based on DNA similarity, representing two distinct clusters and a singleton. One cluster showed similarity to phages previously used to successfully treat soft rot in potatoes, whereas the remaining phages were novel and showed only very limited similarity to previously isolated phages. We selected six diverse phages in order to create the hereto most complex phage cocktail against SRE. The cocktail was applied in a proof-of-principle experiment to treat soft rot in potatoes under simulated storage conditions. We show that the phage cocktail was able to significantly reduce the incidence of soft rot as well as disease severity after 5 days of storage post-infection with Dickeya solani. This confirms results from previous studies that phages represent promising biocontrol agents against SRE infection in potato.
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spelling pubmed-62673282018-12-07 Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani Carstens, Alexander B. Djurhuus, Amaru M. Kot, Witold Jacobs-Sera, Deborah Hatfull, Graham F. Hansen, Lars H. Viruses Article Modern agriculture is expected to face an increasing global demand for food while also needing to comply with higher sustainability standards. Therefore, control of crop pathogens requires new, green alternatives to current methods. Potatoes are susceptible to several bacterial diseases, with infections by soft rot Enterobacteriaceae (SRE) being a significant contributor to the major annual losses. As there are currently no efficient ways of combating SRE, we sought to develop an approach that could easily be incorporated into the potato production pipeline. To this end, 46 phages infecting the emerging potato pathogen Dickeya solani were isolated and thoroughly characterized. The 46 isolated phages were grouped into three different groups based on DNA similarity, representing two distinct clusters and a singleton. One cluster showed similarity to phages previously used to successfully treat soft rot in potatoes, whereas the remaining phages were novel and showed only very limited similarity to previously isolated phages. We selected six diverse phages in order to create the hereto most complex phage cocktail against SRE. The cocktail was applied in a proof-of-principle experiment to treat soft rot in potatoes under simulated storage conditions. We show that the phage cocktail was able to significantly reduce the incidence of soft rot as well as disease severity after 5 days of storage post-infection with Dickeya solani. This confirms results from previous studies that phages represent promising biocontrol agents against SRE infection in potato. MDPI 2018-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6267328/ /pubmed/30423804 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v10110621 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Carstens, Alexander B.
Djurhuus, Amaru M.
Kot, Witold
Jacobs-Sera, Deborah
Hatfull, Graham F.
Hansen, Lars H.
Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title_full Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title_fullStr Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title_full_unstemmed Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title_short Unlocking the Potential of 46 New Bacteriophages for Biocontrol of Dickeya Solani
title_sort unlocking the potential of 46 new bacteriophages for biocontrol of dickeya solani
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6267328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30423804
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v10110621
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