Strategies for developing phages into novel antimicrobial tailocins.
Trends Microbiol
; 2024 Apr 04.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38580606
ABSTRACT
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.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
Trends Microbiol
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article