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Phage therapy, viral phage therapy, or phagotherapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages for the treatment of pathogenic bacterial infections. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] This therapeutic approach emerged at the beginning of the 20th century but was progressively replaced by the use of antibiotics in most parts of the world after the Second World War .
Structural model at atomic resolution of bacteriophage T4 [1] The structure of a typical myovirus bacteriophage Anatomy and infection cycle of bacteriophage T4.. A bacteriophage (/ b æ k ˈ t ɪər i oʊ f eɪ dʒ /), also known informally as a phage (/ ˈ f eɪ dʒ /), is a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea.
Phage therapy is the method by which bacteriophages (viruses which infect bacteria) are used to treat bacterial infections or reduce bacterial populations. Phage therapy has gained recent attention in the United States as an alternative to standard antibiotic therapy .
Phage display cycle. 1) fusion proteins for a viral coat protein + the gene to be evolved (typically an antibody fragment) are expressed in bacteriophage. 2) the library of phage are washed over an immobilised target. 3) the remaining high-affinity binders are used to infect bacteria. 4) the genes encoding the high-affinity binders are isolated.
Much of the initial work on the nature of genetic expression and its regulation was performed with bacteriophages by Francois Jacob, Andre Lwoff and Jacques Monod. In fact, immediately before his studies of the structure of DNA, James Watson had earned his Ph.D. by working on a bacteriophage-related project in Salvador Luria's laboratory
However, phage therapy does pose some potential drawbacks. Antibiotics work by targeting a key part bacterial structure or by impeding a bacterial metabolic function. Because many bacteria have similar metabolic processes and physical structures, an antibiotic could be effective against many different bacteria.
The George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology [1] (aka Tbilisi Institute) has been active since the 1930s in the field of phage therapy, which is used to combat microbial infection (cf. antibiotic-resistant strains).
A culture of bacteria infected by bacteriophages, the "holes" are areas where the bacteria have been killed by the virus. The culture is 10cm in diameter. Phage typing is a phenotypic method that uses bacteriophages ("phages" for short) for detecting and identifying single strains of bacteria . [ 1 ]