Bacteriophage Testing

Bacteriophage testing using naturally occurring viruses that infect bacteria can be time-consuming and costly.

Bacteriophages are unaffected by antimicrobial resistance and are able to target bacteria within biofilms. They can be lysogenic and coexist with their host by inserting themselves into the bacterial genome, or they can be lytic and destroy their host. Lytic bacteriophages replicate inside their hosts, and then release many new bacteriophages able to infect more bacteria.

The first steps in testing bacteriophages are propagation and purification. Exposure of the host bacteria to bacteriophages to test for biofilm formation inhibition, or exposure of the host bacteria in biofilm form to bacteriophages to test for killing of a preformed biofilm, can be done using the MBEC Assay® approach.

Testing for reduced adhesion to target surfaces and with coatings can also be done using our MBEC Assay® Kits or BEST Assay™ system.

Our current model organisms are the host Escherichia coli ATCC 13706 and bacteriophage phi x174. Other host/phage pairs are available on request.