LUZ24-like viruses are a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of Podoviridae

Podoviridae

The Podoviridae are a family of bacteriophages. Unlike the other families of tailed viruses this family has short tails that are non contractile.There are at least 74 species in this family.-Virology:...

viruses.

The currently recognised species within this genus are the Pseudomonas

Pseudomonas

Pseudomonas is a genus of gammaproteobacteria, belonging to the family Pseudomonadaceae containing 191 validly described species.Recently, 16S rRNA sequence analysis has redefined the taxonomy of many bacterial species. As a result, the genus Pseudomonas includes strains formerly classified in the...

infecting viruses LUZ24 and PaP3. These viruses have diverged considerably from other phages whose genomes are known.

Virology

Their virion constitutes an icosahedral head (63 nm) and a short tail (12x8 nm). Although these phages produce small and turbid plaques, all attempts to isolate stable lysogenic P. aeruginosa clones failed. In addition, their genome (around 45kb) does not encode obvious genes indicative of lysogeny.