Bdellovibrio and Like Organisms (BALOs): Biology, Predatory Mechanisms, and Bioindustrial Potential

Bdellovibrio and like organisms (BALOs) are small predatory bacteria that prey mostly on Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria. There has been a remarkable expansion of BALOs biology in the past ten years owing to advances in genomics, transcriptomics, and imaging technologies. Recent advancement of the predation biology of BALOs, expanded our knowledge on the genetic control, enzyme-mediated, the organization of chromosomes through cryo-electron tomography, comparative genomics and gene editing technologies. Genetic engineering of Bdellovibrio sp. is rapidly developing although it lacks consistency in engineered predatory BALOs systems, and established regulatory standards. The biology, diversity, ecological roles, predatory lifecycle and killing mechanisms of BALOs and structural insights into predator-prey interaction, can facilitate their translation into sustainable and scalable technologies. BALOs have many possible applications in aquaculture, environmental management, agriculture, biomedicine, and food safety emphasizing wide range field (real-world) applications. In this review, we discuss ecology, predation, and the diverse molecular, genetic regulation, mechanisms of prey recognition, invasion, and intracellular growth of BALOs. Additionally, this review fills the gap in the predatory bacteria literature, and provides a comprehensive, integrative synthesis of BALOs research and recent biohybrid application. In contrast to previous works, we holistically describe from its biology to recent advancement in engineering and its implication to create a comprehensive review, which provide a practical framework in making BALOs research more reproducible, scalable, and sustainable by integrating taxonomy, ecology, predatory lifecycle, molecular and structural components, and bio-industrial applications.