Fusobacterium necrophorum phages as a potential tool for bovine liver abscess management
Cory Schwarz 1,2*, Jacques Mathieu 1,2, Jenny Laverde Gomez 2, Megan R. Miller 1, Marina Tikhonova 2, Pedro J.J. Alvarez 1,2
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA
- Sentinel Environmental, Houston, Texas, USA
In the beef cattle industry, prophylactic treatment with antibiotics targeting putative etiologic agent of liver abscess formation, Fusobacterium necrophorum, has been shown to be inadequate, resulting in notable product losses ($60 million per year) —a situation that would considerably worsen if antibiotics were curtailed. Concomitantly, public sentiment and stringent regulations are increasingly rallying against antibiotic feed additives, given their perceived role in fueling the proliferation of resistant bacterial strains. To address this need, our work has looked to phage therapy as a potential alternative, or adjunct, to antibiotics. Here, we present the isolation, characterization, and subsequent genetic profiling of six novel phages with the ability to infect F. necrophorum. Our comprehensive assessment of their capacity to inhibit the growth of the F. necrophorum subspecies necrophorum 8L1 (FN8L1) has yielded interesting results, both singularly and in combined scenarios. Notably, while all phages possessed protein-coding sequences akin to those linked with lysogeny, two among the six did not form lysogens. Moreover, no bacterial immunity mechanisms could be detected following exposure to one of our phage isolates, ϕBB. Upon testing the host ranges of these phages, it emerged that four of the six phages were confined to a single Fusobacterium subspecies. However, both ϕKSUM and ϕBB proved capable of infecting multiple subspecies. Beyond this, we documented the efficacious application of four of the isolated and characterized phages as part of high-dose, sequential treatment protocol, utilizing two distinct rotating cocktails to suppress challenge strain FN8L1 growth in the rumen of nine cannulated calves. These findings underscore the potential of certain lysogenic phages as therapeutic agents for sustained bacterial population control, particularly when lytic phages prove challenging to acquire.