---
id: "edwards-2021-indylu"
title: "Complete Genome Sequence of Bacteriophage IndyLu, Isolated from a Microbacterium foliorum Culture"
authors:
  - "Ashley Suris"
  - "Selina Alvarado"
  - "Tommy Butler"
  - "Carlos Canales"
  - "Matthew Castro"
  - "Julia Gaston"
  - "Marlee Goppert"
  - "Raylon Huckaby"
  - "Jesse Laposky"
  - "Jessica Lee"
  - "Elizabeth Mullins"
  - "Damla Ustundag"
  - "Josue Zuniga"
  - "Faith Cox"
  - "Dustin Edwards"
venue: "Microbiology Resource Announcements"
year: 2021
date: "2021-12-16"
doi: "10.1128/MRA.01079-21"
url: "/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01079-21/"
pdf: "/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01079-21/dustin-edwards-10-1128-mra-01079-21.pdf"
pmc: "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8675261/"
openAccess: true
license: "cc-by"
accessions:
  - "genbank:OK318958"
  - "sra:SRX12683423"
citedBy: 1
citedBySource: "OpenAlex, read 2026-09-12"
---
# Complete Genome Sequence of Bacteriophage IndyLu, Isolated from a Microbacterium foliorum Culture

Genome of phage IndyLu, isolated from Stephenville soil; 41,958 bp, 71 genes, one tRNA.

## Abstract

Microbacteriophage IndyLu was isolated from Microbacterium foliorum NRRL B-24224. The 41,958-bp double-stranded DNA genome has 71 predicted protein coding genes and 1 tRNA. The lytic actinobacteriophage was extracted from soil samples collected in Stephenville, TX, and is related to cluster EB bacteriophages Didgeridoo and Lahqtemish.

## Full text

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Complete Genome Sequence of Bacteriophage IndyLu, Isolated
from a Microbacterium foliorum Culture
Ashley Suris,a Selina Alvarado,a Tommy Butler,a Carlos Canales,a Matthew Castro,a Julia Gaston,a Marlee Goppert,a Raylon Huckaby,a
Jesse Laposky,a Jessica Lee,a Elizabeth Mullins,a Damla Ustundag,a Josue Zuniga,a Faith Cox,a Dustin Edwardsa
aDepartment of Biological Sciences, Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, USA
ABSTRACT Microbacteriophage IndyLu was isolated from Microbacterium foliorum NRRL
B-24224. The 41,958-bp double-stranded DNA genome has 71 predicted protein coding
genes and 1 tRNA. The lytic actinobacteriophage was extracted from soil samples collected
in Stephenville, TX, and is related to cluster EB bacteriophages Didgeridoo and Lahqtemish.
M icrobacterium foliorum NRRL B-24224 is a rod-shaped Gram-positive aerobic bacte-
rium from the order Actinomycetales that contains no intact prophages or apparent
antibacteriophage restriction-modification or CRISPR systems (1). Here, we report the whole-
genome sequence of actinobacteriophage IndyLu (2), collected from a dry soil sample near
a horse barn in Stephenville, TX, USA (global positioning system [GPS] coordinates, 32.248 N,
98.209 W). Soil samples were suspended in peptone-yeast extract-calcium (PYCa) medium
and incubated for 2 h in a shaking incubator at 29°C and 200 rpm. The supernatant was
centrifuged and filtered through a 0.22-
mm filter. Filtrates were plated with the isolation
host Microbacterium foliorum NRRL B-24224 using a soft agar overlay. Bacteriophages
were isolated by two rounds of picking a single, well-separated plaque, followed by diluting
the bacteriophage sample in a 10-fold dilution series and plating with M. foliorum. IndyLu
formed small, lytic plaques. Negative-staining transmission electron microscopy (Fig. 1) showed
a siphoviral morphology. ImageJ v1.53m (3) measured a tail length of 155 nm and a capsid
diameter of 65 nm.
High-titer lysates were prepared from flooded plates as described in the Phage Discovery
Guide and used to extract bacteriophage DNA using a modified zinc chloride precipitation
method (4, 5). The Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute prepared the sequencing library from
genomic DNA with the NEBNext Ultra II kit (New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA) using an
Illumina MiSeq instrument (6), with 1,156-fold coverage and 445,388 total single-end 150-bp
reads. A single bacteriophage contig was assembled using the default settings in Newbler
v2.9. Quality control checks for assembly, precision, and genome termini were performed
using Consed v29.0 (6, 7). The linear viral genome comprises 41,958 bp (G1C content, 66.2%)
with a 39 single-stranded terminal overhang 10 bp long of 59-ACTCCCGACA-39.
Whole-genome alignment with NCBI BLASTn (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) (8) showed
greater than 93% nucleotide sequence identity to cluster EB bacteriophages Didgeridoo
(GenBank accession number MH045566) and Lahqtemish (GenBank accession number
MT889392). Auto-annotation using GLIMMER v3.02 (9) and GeneMark v2.5p (10, 11) was
manually refined using Phamerator (12), DNA Master v5.23.2 (http://phagesdb.org/DNAMaster/),
and PECAAN. Microbacteriophage IndyLu is predicted to contain 70 protein-coding genes and
1 tRNA coding for glutamine, identified using ARAGORN v1.2.38 (13) and tRNAscan-SE v2.0 (14).
Putative functions were assigned to 32 of the 71 protein-coding genes using HHpred (15, 16)
and NCBI BLASTp (8). All tools were run with default parameters. Sixty-seven genes are encoded
rightwards, including virion structural and assembly proteins, DNA primase/polymerase,
endolysin, Cas4 family exonuclease, and two HNH endonucleases. IndyLu is among the 6.8%
of cluster EB bacteriophages coding for a tRNA.
Editor John J. Dennehy, Queens College CUNY
Copyright © 2021 Suris et al. This is an open-
access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International license.
Address correspondence to Dustin Edwards,
dcedwards@tarleton.edu.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Received 4 November 2021
Accepted 16 November 2021
Published 16 December 2021
Volume 10 Issue 50 e01079-21 mra.asm.org 1
GENOME SEQUENCES
Downloaded from https://journals.asm.org/journal/mra on 26 July 2026 by 156.146.253.207.

Data availability. The actinobacteriophage IndyLu genome sequence is available
in GenBank under accession number OK318958. The raw reads are available in the SRA under
accession number SRX12683423.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Support for this research was provided by Tarleton State University College of Science and
Technology and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Alliance-Phage
Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) research and education
program.
We thank Graham Hatfull, Welkin Pope, Deborah Jacobs-Sera, Daniel Russell, Rebecca
Garlena, JoAnn Whitefleet-Smith, and Phoebe Doss for technical support during the imaging
of the virion and the isolation, sequencing, and annotation of this genome.
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FIG 1 Transmission electron microscopy of cluster EB bacteriophage IndyLu. High-titer lysate was attached
to a 300 copper mesh grid and negatively stained with uranyl acetate. Imaging using an FEI Tecnai G2 Spirit
BioTWIN transmission electron microscope (NL1.160G) revealed a capsid diameter of 65 nm, tail length of
155 nm, and a morphology consistent with other Siphoviridae family members.
Suris et al.
Volume 10 Issue 50 e01079-21 mra.asm.org 2
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