In an in vivo situation, we can expect such dead cells to be cleared rapidly by the host immune system.

Non-replicating genetically modified filamentous phage which exerted high killing efficiency on cells with minimal release of endotoxin is reported [13]. Higher Salubrinal in vivo survival rate correlated with reduced inflammatory response in case of infected mice treated with genetically modified phage [14]. A phage genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that degrades extracellular polymeric substances and disperses biofilms is reported [15]. Although temperate phages present the problem of lysogeny and the associated risk of transfer of virulence factors through bacterial DNA transduction; we have used a temperate phage as a model for this study as the prophage status simplifies genetic manipulation. Because S. aureus strains are known to Veliparib harbor multiple prophages, which could potentially interfere with recombination and engineering events, we elected to lysogenize

phage P954 in a prophage-free host, S. aureus RN4220. Our strategy was to identify lysogens that harbored the recombinant endolysin-deficient phages, based on detection of phage P954 genes and the cat marker gene by PCR analysis (Figure 1). In the recombination experiment, selleck chemicals llc the 96 chloramphenicol resistant colonies obtained represented recombinant endolysin-inactivated prophage some of which lysed upon Mitomycin C induction. We suspected that the parent phage could also have lysogenized Bay 11-7085 along with the recombinant phage. We overcame the problem by repeating

the induction of chloramphenicol resistant lysogens and lysogenization of the phages produced. When we assessed the prophage induction pattern and phage progeny release of parent and endolysin-deficient phage P954 lysogens, we found that the absorbance of the culture remained unaltered and the extracellular phage titer was minimal with the recombinant phage lysogen. We observed a low phage titer 3 to 4 hours after induction, presumably due to natural disintegration and lysis of a small percentage of the cell population. In contrast, we observed lysis of the culture by the parent phage with increasing phage titer in the lysate, as expected (Figure 2). Complementation of the lysis-deficient phenotype was achieved using a heterologous phage P926 from our collection. Supplying the endolysin gene in trans allowed the recombinant phage to form plaques (Figure 3b, d). This was used to determine titers of the endolysin-deficient phage throughout our study, and provided an excellent method for efficient phage enrichment. Use of a heterologous phage endolysin enabled the recombinant phage to exhibit the lysis-deficient phenotype even after several rounds of multiplication. In vitro activity of the endolysin-deficient phage against MSSA and MRSA was comparable to that of the parent phage (Figure 4). Further, the recombinant phage was able to rescue mice from fatal MRSA infection (Figure 5), similar to the parent phage (data not shown).