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Updated: Jun 10, 2025

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Tapping the treasure trove of atypical phages
1DOE Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Abstract:
With advancements in genomics technologies, a vast diversity of 'atypical' phages, that is, with single-stranded DNA or RNA genomes, are being uncovered from different ecosystems. Though these efforts have revealed the existence and prevalence of these nonmodel phages, computational approaches often fail to associate these phages with their specific bacterial host(s), while the lack of methods to isolate these phages has limited our ability to characterize infectivity pathways and new gene function. In this review, we call for the development of generalizable experimental methods to better capture this understudied viral diversity via isolation and study them through gene-level characterization and engineering. Establishing a diverse set of new 'atypical' phage model systems has the potential to provide many new biotechnologies, including potential uses of these atypical phages in halting the spread of antibiotic resistance and engineering of microbial communities for beneficial outcomes.
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