On the Heat- and Chloroform- Resistance of Marine Bacteriophages

The authors dealt with the determination of heat- and chloroform-resistance of sixteen marine bacteriophages isolated from sea water. Of the sixteen phages, the six were sensitive to heating at 50°C for 30 minutes as well as treatment with chloroform, and the others were resistant to the both treatments. In the six unstable phages, two of them are phages with a long and non-contractile tail on their morphology, and the four other phages are of a short tail. On the other side, within the limited experiments, any unstable phages did not be found among phages with a tail possessing a contractile sheath. The authors found clearly a certain relation between the stability and the structure of particles of the marine bacteriophages examined