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Background  Among viruses, bacteriophages are a group of special interest due to their capacity of infecting bacteria that are important for biotechnology and human health. Composting is a microbial-driven process in which complex organic matter is converted into humus-like substances. In thermophilic composting, the degradation activity is carried out primarily by bacteria and little is known about the presence and role of bacteriophages in this process.    Results  Using  Pseudomonas aeruginosa  as host, we isolated three new phages from a composting operation at the Sao Paulo Zoo Park (Brazil). One of the isolated phages is similar to  Pseudomonas  phage Ab18 and belongs to the  Siphoviridae YuA-like  viral genus. The other two isolated phages are similar to each other and present genomes sharing low similarity with phage genomes in public databases; we therefore hypothesize that they belong to a new genus in the  Podoviridae  family. Detailed genomic descriptions and comparisons of the three phages are presented, as well as two new clusters of phage genomes in the Viral Orthologous Clusters database of large DNA viruses. We found sequences encoding homing endonucleases that disrupt a putative ribonucleotide reductase gene and an RNA polymerase subunit 2 gene in two of the phages. These findings provide insights about the evolution of two-subunits RNA polymerases and the possible role of homing endonucleases in this process. Infection tests on 30 different strains of bacteria reveal a narrow host range for the three phages, restricted to  P. aeruginosa  PA14 and three other  P. aeruginosa  clinical isolates. Biofilm dissolution assays suggest that these phages could be promising antimicrobial agents against  P. aeruginosa  PA14 infections. Analyses on composting metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data indicate association between abundance variations in both phage and host populations in the environment.    Conclusion  The results about the newly discovered and described phages contribute to the understanding of tailed bacteriophage diversity, evolution, and role in the complex composting environment.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3729-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Three novel Pseudomonas phages isolated from composting provide insights into the evolution and diversity of tailed phages