Abstract - Justin Hutchison

Induced Thermal Stability of Phage Protein GP6 via Interactions with Mycobacterium smegmatis

The U.S. incidence of waterborne acquired non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infections has increased to an estimated 68,900 annual cases with an associated hospitalization cost of $1.53 billion.  These cases are seven times greater than the number of Legionnaires’ disease, another common waterborne illness.  Both illnesses are associated with exposure to contaminated drinking water, and current drinking water treatment technologies are not well designed to remove NTM.  One possible approach to managing NTM could involve phages; however, greater efforts to characterize NTM phages in drinking water systems and new tools to study phages are required.  This work examined the induced thermal stability caused by interactions between phage attachment proteins, specifically L5 PG6, and host receptor molecules.  Further, this work examined the application of biosorption to facilitate the detection of NTM in contaminated drinking water.  A high-throughput screening assay was developed to elucidate the matrix effect of relevant drinking water conditions on the binding affinity between the phage attachment protein and the host.  The binding affinity was integrated with Langmuir isotherm modeling to predict NTM concentrations in drinking water.