As conventional antibiotics continue to lose effectiveness against evolving pathogens, scientists are keen to employ the bacteria-killing techniques perfected by bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria.

One major challenge standing in their way is the difficulty of studying individual bacteriophage (phage) proteins and determining precisely how the virus wields these tools to kill their host bacteria. New research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could help speed things along.

“We developed a high-throughput genetic screening approach that can identify the part of the bacterial cell targeted by a potent type of phage weapon called ‘single-gene lysis proteins,’” said Vivek Mutalik, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area and co-senior author on a new study describing the work in Nature Chemical Biology. “With rising antibiotic resistance, we urgently need antibiotic alternatives. Some of the smallest phages that we know of code for single-gene lysis proteins (Sgls), also known as ‘protein antibiotics,’ to inhibit key components of bacterial cell wall production that, when disrupted, consistently kill the cell.”

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