Self-assembling nanofibrous bacteriophage microgels as sprayable antimicrobials targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria

Lei Tian, Leon He, Kyle Jackson, Ahmed Saif, Shadman Khan, Zeqi Wan, Tohid F. Didar and Zeinab Hosseinidoust ()
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Lei Tian: McMaster University
Leon He: McMaster University
Kyle Jackson: McMaster University
Ahmed Saif: McMaster University
Shadman Khan: McMaster University
Zeqi Wan: McMaster University
Tohid F. Didar: McMaster University
Zeinab Hosseinidoust: McMaster University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Nanofilamentous bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) are biofunctional, self-propagating, and monodisperse natural building blocks for virus-built materials. Minifying phage-built materials to microscale offers the promise of expanding the range function for these biomaterials to sprays and colloidal bioassays/biosensors. Here, we crosslink half a million self-organized phages as the sole structural component to construct each soft microgel. Through an in-house developed, biologics-friendly, high-throughput template method, over 35,000 phage-built microgels are produced from every square centimetre of a peelable microporous film template, constituting a 13-billion phage community. The phage-exclusive microgels exhibit a self-organized, highly-aligned nanofibrous texture and tunable auto-fluorescence. Further preservation of antimicrobial activity was achieved by making hybrid protein-phage microgels. When loaded with potent virulent phages, these microgels effectively reduce heavy loads of multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli O157:H7 on food products, leading to up to 6 logs reduction in 9 hours and rendering food contaminant free.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34803-7

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