| Summary: | The emergence of multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains has increased the difficulty of treating these infections. Bacteriophages can eliminate bacterial infections and some bacteriophage tails are lethal to their bacterial hosts. Interestingly, strains of Pseudomonas produce specialized phage tail-like molecules, called pyocins, which are lethal to bacterial strains.
The central goal of my project was to explore the use of phages lacking DNA (ghosts) and genetically engineered phage tail variants as anti-staphylococcal disinfectants or therapeutic agents.
I tested a variety of methods to generate staphylococcal phage ghosts and tails. For one of these, engineered tails derived from staphylococcal phage 77, I tested its ability to effectively kill S. aureus by measuring their effect on cell growth and survival, their ability to bind staphylococcal cells and induction of potassium efflux. These genetically created tails bound staphylococcal cells, but no effect on growth or survival was observed from tails or ghosts.
|
|---|
