On-cell Motion of Single T4 Bacteriophages, a Highly Dynamic Target-finding Process

Abstract

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and have the potential to be used as a fully programmable alternative to antibiotics. However, insight into the detailed interactions between phages and cells that govern the specificity and dynamics of a phage attack is limited. It has been suggested that phages perform a ‘walk’ on the cell surface prior to infection, but direct evidence of discrete on-cell motion is still lacking. We used HILO microscopy to visualize this interaction between T4 phages and E. coli B cells at the single particle level with high temporal resolution. Our findings show that fluorescently labelled phages perform a discrete diffusive ‘walk' on the cell surface that is consistent with a tail-fiber mediated tethered walk. In addition, I will present data that suggests that the distribution of irreversible binding locations on the cell depends on environmental conditions. Together these findings shed new light on the nanoscopic dynamics of phage adsorption, and provide insights for future engineering of phage-cell interactions.