Safety Assessment of Citrobacter freundii Bacteriophages for Use in Phage Therapy in the Face of Antibiotic Resistance

Abstract

Citrobacter freundii is a species of bacteria in the Enterobacteriaceae family that is known to cause hospital-acquired infections in the respiratory tract, urinary tract, blood, and other normally sterile sites in immunocompromised patients and is growing resistant to multiple antibiotics. In the current state of growing antibiotic resistance, phage therapy is one of the alternatives being explored. Two of the biggest concerns regarding phage therapy are the virus' ability to transfer antibiotic resistance or virulence genes through phage morons. After comparison using Linux based BLAST between complete Citrobacter phage genomes downloaded from the NCBI website and the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database and the Virulence Factor Database, it was determined that none of the 21 phages showed signs of carrying virulence or antibiotic resistance genes. Through phylogenetic tree construction using Linux based Roary and web-based ITOL, it was determined that there is a possibility of lysogeny in the phages