Phage contamination is a common complication for the fermentation and pharmaceutical industries. The risk of bacteriophage contamination in laboratory processes increases with multiple rounds of genetic manipulation such as deletion and complementation. The contamination of temperate phages does not lead to immediate host cell lysis but could become a serious issue when the lytic cycle is activated under specific conditions. Our objective was to develop a quick and reliable detection method for checking possible temperate phage contamination. Here, using motility plates, we found that when the strain carries a newly acquired temperate phage, its presence can be easily detected by the formation of a clear ‘lysis zone’ when swimming against the original strain on the same swimming plates. Compared to the traditional double agar layer method and genomic sequencing-based methods, the duration of the motility-based assay is shorter and the procedure is simplified. More importantly, for the bacterial strains that already contain active prophages, this method can still easily detect the newly acquired phages without tedious phage identification procedure. These features make this method highly applicable to laboratory and industrial processes.

中文翻译：

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使用简单的运动试验快速检测温带噬菌体

噬菌体污染是发酵和制药行业的常见并发症。实验室过程中噬菌体污染的风险随着多轮基因操作（例如缺失和互补）的增加而增加。温带噬菌体的污染不会导致宿主细胞立即裂解，但当裂解循环在特定条件下被激活时，可能会成为一个严重的问题。我们的目标是开发一种快速可靠的检测方法来检查可能的温带噬菌体污染。在这里，使用运动板，我们发现当菌株携带新获得的温带噬菌体时，可以通过在同一游泳板上与原始菌株游动时形成清晰的“裂解区”来轻松检测其存在。与传统的双琼脂层方法和基于基因组测序的方法相比，基于运动的测定的持续时间更短，程序也更简单。更重要的是，对于已经含有活性原噬菌体的菌株，这种方法仍然可以很容易地检测到新获得的噬菌体，而无需繁琐的噬菌体鉴定程序。这些特点使这种方法非常适用于实验室和工业过程。