Fully synthetic bacteriophage engineering system propels long-obstructed bacteriophage research

 

As antibiotic-resistant infections increasingly threaten public health, interest in bacteriophages as therapeutics has seen a resurgence. However, laborious strain engineering techniques have limited the pace of discovery and the creation of tailored therapeutic strains. 

In a PNAS study scheduled for publication on January 23rd, researchers from New England Biolabs and Yale University describe the first fully synthetic bacteriophage engineering system for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium of global concern. 

By leveraging golden gate assembly, the method:

• Uses digital sequence data rather than bacteriophage isolates

• Removes the need to propagate physical phage isolates or specialized host bacteria

• Allows for many simultaneous edits instead of iterative editing

• Works with therapeutically relevant bacteriophages that have previously required extremely specialized expertise to study
  
  

A related study, which described engineering high-GC content Mycobacterium (tuberculosis) phages, was published in November, and a December study applied the method to engineer biosensing bacteriophages for detecting E. coli in drinking water.

 

Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle, Pharmaceutical Microbiology Resources (http://www.pharmamicroresources.com/)