Putting Evolution to Work: Host Range Alteration for Phage Therapy

Host range describes the hosts that a bacteriophage can and cannot infect. Throughout the history of phage use in various applications, phages with varying host ranges have been needed and techniques to alter a phage's host range have been developed. These include techniques that rely on spontaneous mutations and others that use genetic engineering to make designed changes. Phages with altered host ranges have been used in personalized phage therapy cases and in cocktails in clinical trials. In this review, we provide descriptions of methods for altering a phage's host range with a focus on applications to phage therapy.