Abstract
Bacteriophages, abbreviated as “phages”, have been developed as emerging nanoprobes for the detection of a wide variety of biological species, such as biomarker molecules and pathogens. Nanosized phages can display a certain length of exogenous peptides of arbitrary sequence or single-chain variable fragments (scFv) of antibodies that specifically bind to the targets of interest, such as animal cells, bacteria, viruses, and protein molecules. Metal nanoparticles generally have unique plasmon resonance effects. Metal nanoparticles such as gold, silver, and magnetism are widely used in the field of visual detection. A phage can be assembled with metal nanoparticles to form an organic–inorganic hybrid probe due to its nanometer-scale size and excellent modifiability. Due to the unique plasmon resonance effect of this composite probe, this technology can be used to visually detect objects of interest under a dark-field microscope. In summary, this review summarizes the recent advances in the development of phage-based probes for ultra-sensitive detection of various bio-species, outlining the advantages and limitations of detection technology of phage-based assays, and highlighting the commonly used editing technologies of phage genomes such as homologous recombination and clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated proteins system (CRISPR-Cas). Finally, we discuss the possible scenarios for clinical application of phage-probe-based detection methods.
Highlights
Bacteriophages, called phages, are viruses that infect bacteria and are widely distributed on the planet, including in deserts, hot springs, polar waters, sewers, and guts of animals and humans [1,2,3]
In addition to highlighting the various phage probe-based assays described above, we introduce two common techniques for phage gene editing, namely homologous recombination and CRISP-cas9, to obtain recombinant phage for construction of the hybrid phage-nanomaterial probes
At the end of this review, we summarize the advantages and limitations of using phage-based probes to detect biological species and look forward to future improvements and application scenarios
Summary
Bacteriophages, called phages, are viruses that infect bacteria and are widely distributed on the planet, including in deserts, hot springs, polar waters, sewers, and guts of animals and humans [1,2,3]. They constitute the most abundant class of viruses on earth, which is believed to outnumber bacteria by several folds [3,4]. At the end of this review, we summarize the advantages and limitations of using phage-based probes to detect biological species and look forward to future improvements and application scenarios
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