phage therapy
Research Article | Therapeutics and PreventionComputational Basis for On-Demand Production of Diversified Therapeutic Phage CocktailsThe antibiotic resistance crisis has led to renewed interest in phage therapy as an alternative means of treating infection. However, conventional methods for isolating pathogen-specific phage are slow, labor-intensive, and frequently unsuccessful. We have demonstrated that computationally identified prophages carried by near-neighbor bacteria can serve as starting material for production of engineered phages that kill the target...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceBiofilm Structure Promotes Coexistence of Phage-Resistant and Phage-Susceptible BacteriaIn the natural environment, bacteria most often live in communities bound to one another by secreted adhesives. These communities, or biofilms, play a central role in biogeochemical cycling, microbiome functioning, wastewater treatment, and disease. Wherever there are bacteria, there are also viruses that attack them, called phages. Interactions between bacteria and phages are likely to occur ubiquitously in biofilms. We show here,...
Special Issue Perspective | Host-Microbe BiologyVive la Persistence: Engineering Human Microbiomes in the 21st CenturyI imagine a future in which children grow up with healthy microbial communities. Engineering human microbiomes might actually be achievable in the near future, as we enter an era of hunting for human-adapted bacterial strains and phages. Furthermore, breath metabolites could allow us to track whether a probiotic colonizes persistently or a phage has knocked down a microbe of interest.