Libraries of phages displaying diverse peptides are typically surveyed by affinity selection, using immobilized biomolecules as selectors. After exposing the library to the selector and washing away unbound phages, the bound phages are enriched for clones displaying selector binding peptides. Those phages are recovered by release from the selector and propagation in fresh host cells. Release is...

A number of bacteriophages have been identified that target the Vi capsular antigen of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Here we show that these Vi phages represent a remarkably diverse set of phages belonging to three phage families, including Podoviridae and Myoviridae. Genome analysis facilitated the further classification of these phages and highlighted aspects of their independent evoluti...

Great differences in capability to detect bacteriophages from urban sewage of the area of Barcelona existed among 115 strains of Bacteroides fragilis. The capability of six of the strains to detect phages in a variety of feces and wastewater was studied. Strains HSP40 and RYC4023 detected similar numbers of phages in urban sewage and did not detect phages in animal feces. The other four strains...

Filamentous phages have unique physical properties, such as uniform particle lengths, that are not found in other model systems of rod-like colloidal particles. Consequently, suspensions of such phages provided powerful model systems that have advanced our understanding of soft matter physics in general and liquid crystals in particular. We described some of these advances. In particular we bri...

Abstract Homing endonuclease genes (HEGs) are ubiquitous selfish elements that generate targeted double-stranded DNA breaks, facilitating the recombination of HEG sequence into break site and contributing to evolutionary dynamics HEG-encoding genomes. Bacteriophages (phages) well-documented carry HEGs, with paramount characterization HEGs being focused on those encoded by coliphage T4. Recently...

A broad range of typing phages belonging to lytic groups I, 11, 111, IV and those classified as miscellaneous produced plaques on Staphylococcus aureus strain KI. Two variant forms of this strain were compared, KIN and KIHI. Phages belonging to lytic group 11, of both A and B serology, had low efficiencies of plating (EOP) for the KiN variant but had high EOP values for the KIHI variant. In gen...

The current dramatic increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria has revitalised the interest in bacteriophages as alternative antibacterial treatment. Meanwhile, the development of bioinformatics methods for analysing genomic data places high-throughput approaches for phage characterization within reach. Here, we present HostPhinder, a tool aimed at predicting the bacterial host of phages by exa...

Therapeutic potential of five purified and well characterized bacteriophages (Pa29, Pa30, Pa31, Pa33 and Pa34) was evaluated in thermally injured and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO infected mice. Efficacy of five P. aeruginosa phages was assessed on the basis of percentage survival of phage treated mice. Toxicity evaluation of all the phages, showed them to be non toxic as no sign of morbidity and ...

Display of functional antibody fragments on the surface of filamentous bacteriophages allows fast selection of specific phage antibodies against a variety of target antigens. However, enrichment of single chain variable fragment (scFv)-displaying phages is often hampered by the abundance of bacteriophages lacking antibody fragments. Moderate adhesive binding activities and production advantages...

To determine the distribution pattern of ribonucleic acid (RNA) coliphages (classified by serological groups I through IV) in animal sources, we isolated RNA phages from (i) feces samples from domestic animals (cows, pigs, horses, and fowls), some other animals in a zoological garden, and humans, (ii) the gastrointestinal contents of cows and pigs, and (iii) sewage samples from treatment plants...