Strategies for developing phages into novel antimicrobial tailocins

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftReviewForskningfagfællebedømt

Tailocins are high-molecular-weight bacteriocins produced by bacteria to kill related environmental competitors by binding and puncturing their target. Tailocins are promising alternative antimicrobials, yet the diversity of naturally occurring tailocins is limited. The structural similarities between phage tails and tailocins advocate using phages as scaffolds for developing new tailocins. This article reviews three strategies for producing tailocins: disrupting the capsid–tail junction of phage particles, blocking capsid assembly during phage propagation, and creating headless phage particles synthetically. Particularly appealing is the production of tailocins through synthetic biology using phages with contractile tails as scaffolds to unlock the antimicrobial potential of tailocins.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftTrends in Microbiology
ISSN0966-842X
DOI
StatusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to Rob Lavigne for brainstorming around the different strategies to produce headless phages, and Rob Edgar and Derek Pickard for early discussion about the various methods available to obtain phage tail particles. This work was supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research ( 9041-00159B ).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s)

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