Envisaging bacteria as phage targets
نویسنده
چکیده
It can be difficult to appreciate just how small bacteria and phages are or how large, in comparison, the volumes that they occupy. A single milliliter, for example, can represent to a phage what would be, with proper scaling, an "ocean" to you and me. Here I illustrate, using more easily visualized macroscopic examples, the difficulties that a phage, as a randomly diffusing particle, can have in locating bacteria to infect. I conclude by restating the truism that the rate of phage adsorption to a given target bacterium is a function of phage density, that is, titer, in combination with the degree of bacterial susceptibility to adsorption by an encountering phage.
منابع مشابه
Bacteriophage: Time to Re-Evaluate the Potential of Phage Therapy as a Promising Agent to Control Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria
Nowadays the most difficult problem in treatment of bacterial infections is the appearance of resistant bacteria to the antimicrobial agents so that the attention is being drawn to other potential targets. In view of the positive findings of phage therapy, many advantages have been mentioned which utilizes phage therapy over chemotherapy and it seems to be a promising agent to replace the antib...
متن کاملExpression and Purification of Brucella-Specific Nanobodies
Background: Brucellosis is still considered as one of the major zoonosis afflicting Syrian health and economy. This disease is caused by members of the genus Brucella which are gram-negative bacteria living facultatively within mammalian cells during infection. Objectives: In this paper, a strategy was developed to introduce a new generation of binders called Nanobodies (Nbs) in our combat aga...
متن کاملSpatial Vulnerability: Bacterial Arrangements, Microcolonies, and Biofilms as Responses to Low Rather than High Phage Densities
The ability of bacteria to survive and propagate can be dramatically reduced upon exposure to lytic bacteriophages. Study of this impact, from a bacterium's perspective, tends to focus on phage-bacterial interactions that are governed by mass action, such as can be observed within continuous flow or similarly planktonic ecosystems. Alternatively, bacterial molecular properties can be examined, ...
متن کاملUsing a bacteriocin structure to engineer a phage lysin that targets Yersinia pestis.
Purified phage lysins present an alternative to traditional antibiotics and work by hydrolysing peptidoglycan. Phage lysins have been developed against Gram-positive pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis and Streptococcus pneumoniae, where the peptidoglycan layer is exposed on the cell surface. Addition of the lysin to a bacterial culture results in rapid death of the organism. Gram-negative bac...
متن کاملFormation of therapeutic phage cocktail and endolysin to highly multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii: in vitro and in vivo study
Objective(s): Phage therapy is a potential alternative treatment for infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii, a significant nosocomial pathogen, which has evolved resistance to almost all conventional antimicrobial drugs in poor hygiene and conflicts areas such as Iraq. Materials and Methods: Bacteriophages were isolated to highly resistant isolates of A. baumannii to form therapeutic phag...
متن کامل