• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.103-108
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• 2020

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is an important pathogenic bacteria and can cause severe foodborne disease. For STEC detection, conventional culture methods have disadvantages in the fact that conventional culture takes a long time to detect and PCR can also detect dead bacteria. To overcome these problems, we suggest a bacteriophage amplification assay, which utilizes the ability of bacteriophages to infect living cells and their high specificity. We used a combination of six bacteriophages infecting E. coli to make the bacteriophage cocktail and added ferrous ammonium sulfate as a virucidal agent to remove free-bacteriophages. When cherry tomato and paprika were artificially inoculated with the cocktail at a final concentration of around 3 log CFU/mL and were enriched for at least 5 h in mTSB broth with Novobiocin, approximately 2-3 log PFU/mL were detected through the bacteriophage amplification assay. Therefore, bacteriophage amplification assay might be convenient and a useful method to detect STEC in a short period of time.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.176-181
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• 2011

Cronobacter sakazakii and Salmonella enterica Typhimurium are hazardous pathogens, especially for ready-toeat foods. For control of pathogens, the virulent bacteriophages were isolated, identified, and applied to infant formula milk and vegetable juice. The phages were isolated from swine feces and identified by morphology and molecular characteristics. ES2 phage for C. sakazakii and ST2 phage for S enterica Typhimurium were identified as Myoviridae and Siphoviridae, respectively. Their burst sizes were $52{\pm}5PFU/cell$ for ES2 phage and $21{\pm}3PFU/cell$ for ST2 phage after latent period of 30-40 minutes. ST2 phage showed higher heat stability at $60^{\circ}C$ than ES2 phage. ES2 phage held the growth of C. sakazakii untill 6 hr afterwhich the number decreased when applied to the infant formula milk and vegetable juice. ST2 phage also showed growth inhibition so that the number of S. enterica Typhimurium decreased. Therefore, virulent bacteriophages might be an agent for the growth inhibition of C. sakazakii and S. enterica Typhimurium in such the ready-to-eat foods.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.181-188
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• 2017

Bacteriophages are viruses that exclusively infect bacterial cells, and lytic bacteriophages can be used as a safe alternative to antibiotics for the prevention and treatment of animal diseases. In this study, we attempted to isolate and characterize bacteriophages for Salmonella enterica serovar Gallinarum (Salmonella Gallinarum), the causative agent of fowl typhoid in chickens. Ten bacteriophages were isolated from samples of sewage from seven poultry slaughterhouses. One of these isolate, designated as $SG{\Phi}-YS$ SP and classified in the family Myoviridae, produced plaques with seven Salmonella Gallinarum strains. However, no plaques were produced with any of the Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis strains tested, suggesting that this bacteriophage is Salmonella Gallinarum specific. To assess the lytic ability of $SG{\Phi}-YS$ SP against Salmonella Gallinarum, bacterial growth rates following inoculation of the bacteriophage were compared with the control. The $SG{\Phi}-YS$ SP treatment, with a multiplicity of infection of 10, reduced the growth of Salmonella Gallinarum by 2.21 log cfu/mL at 6 h, and 2.13 log cfu/mL at 9 h, suggesting that this bacteriophage isolate could be used for the prevention or treatment of Salmonella Gallinarum infection in chickens.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.109-112
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• 2020

To evaluate the safety of bacteriophages for application of sanitizer, endotoxin content and cell cytotoxicity of two Escherichia coli and four Staphylococcus aureus phages were determined. Endotoxin ratio was determined by the Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) assay as a test for representative biological endotoxin content. The average endotoxin average content of the 9 log PFU/mL lysate was 18.6 EU/mL and that of the 10 log PFU/mL lysate was 5.9 EU/mL, suggesting that the phage lysate was not suitable for clinical applications, but suitable for food pathogen control applications. To confirm the cell cytotoxicity of the phage lysates, MTT assay was performed using Raw 264.7 cells treated with 9 log PFU/mL phages. Results of the assay indicated that the phage lysates did not significantly decrease the cell viability (p>0.05). These results indicated that bacteriophages would be suitable as a food safety sanitizer.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.287-292
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• 2019

Pseudomonas tolaasii causes brown blotch disease on the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus). Various pathogenic strains of P. tolaasii were isolated and divided into three subtypes, $P1{\alpha}$, $P1{\beta}$, and $P1{\gamma}$. For phage therapy, bacteriophages against to these subtype strains were applied to mushroom cultivation and very successful to prevent from the disease. In this study, bacteriophages were isolated against the representative strains of subtype pathogens and their polyclonal antibodies were synthesized to investigate structural relationship among capsid proteins of phages. Phage preparations over $10^{10}pfu/mL$ were injected to rabbit thigh muscle and polyclonal antibodies were obtained after three times of boost injection. Titers of the antibodies obtained were over $2{\times}10^7Ab/mL$ for the phage ${\phi}6264$, $1{\times}10^6Ab/mL$ for the phage ${\phi}HK2$, and $1{\times}10^7Ab/mL$ for the phage ${\phi}HK19$ and phage ${\phi}HK23$. High specific activities were observed between antibodies and the corresponding bacteriophages. Some cross-reactivities between the antibodies and non-corresponding bacteriophages were also measured. Antibody $Ab{\phi}6264$ inactivated all phages of $P1{\alpha}$ subtype and only phage ${\phi}HK16$ among $P1{\beta}$ subtype phages. Antibody $Ab{\phi}HK23$ of $P1{\gamma}$ subtype neutralized all phages of $P1{\beta}$ subtype as well as the phage ${\phi}HK23$, showing the widest phage-inactivation range. When the structural-similarity studies of phages were investigated by using phage antibodies, closeness obtained by phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA genes of pathogenic strains were quite different from that of polyclonal antibody-specific structural similarity of phage capsid proteins. In conclusion, there is weak correlation between the host strain specificity of bacteriophage and its capsid structural similarity measured by phage antibodies.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.236-242
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• 1998

While bacteriophage P2-P4 system is very useful experimental tool for the study of viral capsid assembly, there is no useful plasmid vector for the DNA manipulation in bacteriophage P2-P4 system. In this study, a new vector plasmid, P4 ash8 (sid71) kmr, was constructed by swapping the non-essential region of P4 DNA for kanamycin resistance(kmr) gene cassette of plasmid pUC4-K. P4 ash8 sid71 was starting material for the construction, since it tends to be maintained as a plasmid in the absence of the helper phage. The total size of this chimera was designed to be packaged into P4 or P2 size heads with induction by P2 infection. The conversion of plasmid P4 ash8 (sid71) kmr to bacteriophage was proved by burst size determination experiment and CsCl buoyant equilibrium density gradient experiment. Integrase destructed P4 derivative, P4 ash8 sid71 kmr intS, was able to be constructed easily by in vitro DNA manipulation of P4 ash8 sid71 kmr. The plasmid stability experiment with P4 ash8 sid71 kmr if/tS showed that the integrase of P4 affects the stable maintenance of plasmid P4 state.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2013

Bacteriophage P2 sir mutants are inefficient helpers for their satellite bacteriophage P4. The term, "P2 sir-associated helper inefficiency" has been used to define this phenomenon and it has been suggested that the DNA sequence difference between the cos region of P2 and that of P4 is responsible. To test this hypothesis, P4 derivative phage, P4 sid71 cosP2, containing the cos region of P2 and sid71 allele was constructed through several in vitro DNA manipulation steps. Its burst size was determined using a one-step growth experiment. The results showed that the substitution of the cos region of P2 for the cos region of P4 in P4 sid71 cosP2 overcame "P2 sir-associated helper inefficiency". P4 sid71 cosP2 stock phages prepared with P2 wild type helper and P2 sir helper were analyzed using a CsCl buoyant equilibrium density gradient experiment. The results revealed that the phage particles containing three copies of the P4 genome were the predominant particles in both cases.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.351-356
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• 2016

Bacterial blotch caused by Pseudomonas tolaasii is one of the major diseases of oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus. Application of bacteriophages is a very useful tool to decrease the density of pathogens and it has been successful to making disease-free cultivation area, known as phage therapy. Effect of phages on pathogen sterilization is very limited to the specific host strains. Minor variations of the host strains may cause changes in phage sensitivity. The phage-resistant strains of P. tolaasii were isolated and their pathogenic characters were investigated to improve the effectiveness of phage therapy. In the phylogenetic analysis, both phage-resistant strains and the corresponding host strains were identical based on the sequence comparison of 16S rRNA genes. The pathogenic characters, such as hemolytic activity and brown blotch formation, were measured on the phage-resistant strains and no correlation between phage-resistance and pathogenic characters was observed. Nevertheless, pathogenic characters were sometimes changed in the phage-resistant strains depending on the host strains. In order to make the phage therapy successful, the bacteriophages having a wide host range should be isolated.

• Monthly Korean Chicken
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.104-109
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• 2013

• KOREAN POULTRY JOURNAL
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.160-162
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• 2023