What is it about?
The growing resistance against antibiotics has re-inculcated the thought of using phage therapy to eradicate resistant pathogens. Mycobacterium is one such group of pathogen that deserves a serious thought. In this study we established the evidence of the enhanced killing potential of mycobacteriophage D29 of its non-pathogenic host Mycobacterium smegmatis. This lytic phage not only kills its host by cell lysis but also by a lysis-independent mechanism.
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Why is it important?
The study explains that a lytic phage can deploy secondary mechanisms to reduce its number of host to a substantial level. This is the first comprehensive report on bacteriophage mediated host killing by a lysis independent meachanism named death without lysis (DWL).
Perspectives
Around the globe millions of deaths occur due to various bacterial infections. Since phages specific to these pathogens are self-replicating pharmaceuticals, they might possess the ability to be the cure for most of them. This study might give us the opportunity to decipher their potential to be used as antimicrobial agents for the treatment of such infections, like Tuberculosis.
sourabh samaddar
University of Maryland Baltimore
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Dynamics of Mycobacteriophage-Mycobacterial Host Interaction: Evidence for Secondary Mechanisms for Host Lethality, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2015, ASM Journals,
DOI: 10.1128/aem.02700-15.
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