title: Short communication: Characterization of Shiga toxin 2-carrying bacteriophages induced from Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli isolated from Italian dairy products.
abstract: Forty samples of raw milk cheese and 25 samples of raw milk itself were subjected to enrichment culture for Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC), and a single Shiga toxin 2- (Stx(2)) positive strain was obtained from one of the cheese samples. Thus, aged cheeses in which the curd is subsequently heat treated (48°C) cannot be presumed to be STEC free. Infective Stx(2) bacteriophages were induced from 3 STEC strains isolated elsewhere from raw milk and 1 STEC strain from aged cheese sourced in Italy. Data on E. coli host range, morphology, genome size, and genetic variation determined by restriction fragment length polymorphism and multi-locus genotyping are presented. Although all 4 bacteriophages were found to be short-tailed Podoviridae, they exhibited considerable variation in both genome size and content. This extended to the Stx(2) genes themselves, whose sequences contained several point mutations, but these did not translate to amino acid substitutions.
authors.affiliation: Dipartmento di Scienze e Tecnologie Alimentari e Microbiologiche, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Volponi
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Rooks
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Picozzi
authors.forename: H E
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Allison
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vigentini
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Foschino
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: McCarthy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002417:Cattle; D002611:Cheese / Q000382:microbiology / Q000821:virology; D003611:Dairy Products / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000821:virology; D007558:Italy; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D008892:Milk / Q000382:microbiology / Q000821:virology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017902:Podoviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D022641:Shiga Toxin 2 / Q000235:genetics*; D054323:Shiga-Toxigenic Escherichia coli / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000821:virology
chemical_list: D022641:Shiga Toxin 2