Four Novel Curtobacterium Phages Isolated from Environmental Samples

Abstract Despite Curtobacterium spp. often being associated with the plant phyllosphere, i.e., the areal region of different plant species, only one phage targeting a Curtobacterium spp. has been isolated to this day. In this study, we isolated four novel plaque-forming Curtobacterium phages Reje, Penoan, Parvaparticeps, and Pize with two novel Curtobacterium strains as propagation hosts. Based on the low nucleotide intergenomic similarities (< 32.4%) between these four phages and to any published phage genomes on NCBI, we propose the four new genera “Rejevirus”, “Pizevirus”, “Penoanvirus”, and “Parvaparticepsvirus” all in the class Caudoviricetes.