Open AccessPhage-Based Applications in Synthetic Biology
Author(s) -
Sébastien Lemire,
Kevin Yehl,
Timothy K. Lu
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
annual review of virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.605
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 2327-0578
pISSN - 2327-056X
DOI - 10.1146/annurev-virology-092917-043544
Subject(s) - synthetic biology , biology , bacteriophage , computational biology , chemical biology , systems biology , genetics , gene , escherichia coli
Bacteriophage research has been instrumental to advancing many fields of biology, such as genetics, molecular biology, and synthetic biology. Many phage-derived technologies have been adapted for building gene circuits to program biological systems. Phages also exhibit significant medical potential as antibacterial agents and bacterial diagnostics due to their extreme specificity for their host, and our growing ability to engineer them further enhances this potential. Phages have also been used as scaffolds for genetically programmable biomaterials that have highly tunable properties. Furthermore, phages are central to powerful directed evolution platforms, which are being leveraged to enhance existing biological functions and even produce new ones. In this review, we discuss recent examples of how phage research is influencing these next-generation biotechnologies.