Acid tolerance and morphological characteristics of five Weissella cibaria bacteriophages isolated from kimchi

Five bacteriophages were isolated from kimchi with the hosts of two Weissella cibaria and acid-producing bacteria, and characterized for understanding Weissella phage. By transmission electron microscope, фWC51 and фWC52 belonged to the Myoviridae and фWC005, фWC130, and фWC248 belonged to the Podoviridae . One-step growth curves showed that latent periods of bacteriophages ranged from 70 to 90 min and burst sizes ranged from 7 to 195 particles/cell. фWC51 and фWC005 were thermally resistant than the others and those D values were 71 and 34 s at 70 °C. pH stability test at pH 2.0–4.0 showed фWC005 was most stable and the others were also stable at low pH of 3.0. Interestingly, the phages showed two types of morphology and had a high tolerance under acidic condition, therefore, which might cause mortality to the Weissella after middle stage of kimchi fermentation.