Bacteriophage biosensors for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Abstract

An increasing number of disease-causing bacteria are resistant to one or more anti-bacterial drugs utilized for therapy. Early and speedy detection of these pathogens is therefore very important. Traditional pathogen detection techniques, that include microbiological and biochemical assays are long and labor-intensive, while antibody or DNA-based methods require substantial sample preparation and purification. Biosensors based on bacteriophages have demonstrated remarkable potential to surmount these restrictions and to offer rapid, efficient and sensitive detection technique for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Keywords::

• detection
• filamentous
• lytic
• monolayers
• reporter phages
• spheroids

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Key issues

• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a serious problem for medicine and public health worldwide.

• Real-time, sensitive methods of detecting antibiotic-resistant pathogens are needed to start adequate therapy and prevent the spread of infection.

• Current methods for diagnosis of pathogens are usually based on antibodies application. But cross-reactivity of polyclonal antibodies and high production cost of monoclonal antibodies are limitation factors for these methods.

• Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses of bacteria. They are highly specific and can recognize only bacteria of one species or only one particular strain. Specific bacteriophage can be isolated for any bacteria.

• Bacteriophages, in contrast to antibodies, are stable in wide range of environmental conditions.

• Efficacy of phages and their components as recognition elements on biosensor surface was shown in the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• Genetic and structural modifications of bacteriophages gave new opportunities for development of highly specific and selective probes for detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• Phage can be used for developing of new technologies to decrease minimum detection threshold of pathogens.

• Phage biosensors can be stable for several months and reusable.

• Development of new biosensors will be focused on the discrimination between antibiotic-resistant and -sensitive bacteria.

Notes