In this article, veterinary microbiologist Ben Swift explains a state-of-the-art approach to using bacteriophages to diagnose mycobacterial diseases. This pioneering diagnostic test has potential to benefit both human and veterinary diagnostics.
How can phages detect bacteria?
- The detection of mycobacteria using molecular methods, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), can be hampered by inefficient cell lysis.
- Our team has recently commercialised a bacteriophage technology, Actiphage, through PBD Biotech. This technology exploits phages’ ability to break open bacteria from the inside to efficiently lyse their host and release their DNA, without the need for chemical or mechanical lysis methods.
- We can then simply carry out a PCR assay to detect the DNA released; crucially, as phages only replicate inside a live host, only DNA from the viable host will be detected, which is akin to culture (Figure 1).1