Bacteriophages: from Isolation to Application

Bacteriophages are considered as a potential alternative to fight pathogenic bacteria during the antibiotic resistance era. With their high specificity, they are widely used in various applications: medicine, food industry, agriculture, animal farms, biotechnology, diagnosis, etc. Many techniques have been designed by different researchers for phage isolation, purification, and amplification, each of which has strengths and weaknesses. However, all aim at having a reasonably pure phage sample that can be further characterized. Phages can be characterized based on their physiological, morphological or inactivation tests. Microscopy, in particular, opened a wide gate, not only for visualizing phage morphological structure, but also for monitoring biochemistry and behavior. Meanwhile, computational analysis of phage genomes provides more details about phage history, lifestyle, and the potential for toxigenic or lysogenic conversion, which translate to safety in biocontrol and phage therapy applications. This review article summarizes phage application pipelines at different levels, and addresses specific restrictions and knowledge gaps in the field. Recently developed computational approaches, which are used in phage genome analysis, are critically assessed. We hope that this assessment provides researchers with useful insights for the selection of suitable approaches for phage-related research aims and applications.