Abstract

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms like fish, shrimp and aquatic plants in controlled enviroments and is one of the main economic activities in the state of Baja California Sur. One of the main problems in aquaculture are the bacterial infections outbreaks and the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Phage therapy can be defined as the use of bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) to combat bacterial infections and offers a sustainable alternative to the use of antibiotics.

This project aims to develop a treatment against Vibrio diabolicus, a dangerous bacterium in aquaculture, using a component of bacteriophage PDCC-1. To achieve this goal, the DNA sequence of phage PDCC-1 was analyzed and gene 33 was selected to amplification. The gene 33 was cloned into a plasmid and expressed in the bacterium Escherichia coli, to produce the gene 33 protein within this bacterium. Finally, we evaluated the growth inhibition of the total protein extract from this culture against V. diabolicus. The results of this work showed that gene 33 has antibacterial activity against V. diabolicus.