Hello all,
Recently I have noticed an uptick of instances where my miniprepped plasmids, when sequenced (using Plasmidsaurus), often give back either 2 peaks or only one peak, where this peak is the E. coli f1 phage genome, even if restriction digests prior to sequencing submission come out clean. I do not observe any other signs of lysis in culture, or plaques in plates.
We are not a phage lab so I am uncertain where the contamination may stem. If you have any advice on how to deal with this problem that would be very welcome.
Thanks in advice,
Ignacio
The f1 phage is non-lytic. If your bacterial stocks are contaminated there will be no plaque as the f1 phage just slows host growth slightly so only fresh infections would cause an area of inhibited growth. Only advice I can give is to scrap your current bacterial cultures, disinfect your work areas, go to your bacterial glycerol stocks, pick single colonies and do PCR to see if you can isolate a colony that is phage free and start from there.
I would also suggest if you are having f1 phage contamination issues, you switch to a host strain that is not carrying an F episome. Filamentous phages like f1 can not infect a strain that is not carrying the F episome.
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