In Vivo Capsid Engineering of Bacteriophages for Oriented Surface Conjugation

The current state-of-the-art in bacteriophage (phage) immobilization onto magnetic particles is limited to techniques that are less expensive and/or facile but nonspecific or those that are more expensive and/or complicated but ensure capsid-down orientation of the phages, as necessary to preserve infectivity and performance in subsequent applications (e.g., therapeutics, detection). These cost, complexity, and effectiveness limitations constitute the major hurdles that limit the scale-up of phagebased strategies and thus their accessibility in low-resource settings. Here, we report a plasmid-based technique that incorporates a silica-binding protein, L2, into the T7 phage capsid, during viral assembly, with and without inclusion of a flexible linker peptide, allowing for targeted binding of the phage capsid to silica without requiring the direct modification of the phage genome. L2-tagged phages were then immobilized onto silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles. Inclusion of the flexible linker between the phage capsid protein and the L2 protein improved immobilization density compared to both wild type T7 phages and L2-tagged phages without the flexible linker. Taken together, this work demonstrates phage capsid modification without engineering the phage genome, which provides an important step toward reducing the cost and increasing the specificity/directionality of phage immobilization methods and could be more broadly applied in the future for other phages for a range of other capsid tags and nanomaterials.

Automated summary

The current techniques for bacteriophage immobilization onto magnetic particles are limited in cost-effectiveness and specificity. This study presents a plasmid-based technique that incorporates a silica-binding protein into the phage capsid, enabling targeted binding to silica without modifying the phage genome. By improving immobilization density, this technique offers a step toward reducing cost and increasing specificity in phage immobilization methods.