The evolution of bacteriophage life-history traits: Does host physiology control the success of virulent and temperate strategies?

噬菌体是最有前景的抗生素替代品之一，为治疗多重耐药细菌感染提供了有效的工具。最近使用噬菌体作为最后的药物，表明它们在治疗与慢性分枝杆菌感染相关的发病率方面是有效的。然而，许多噬菌体并不杀死它们的宿主，而是作为基因组先知休眠。这是噬菌体疗法的一个主要限制，因为目前还不清楚为什么不同的生活方式策略在不同的宿主和环境中占据主导地位。通过使用分子克隆和基于恒化器的分析，我将检验各种可能解释噬菌体生活史特征变异的假说。这应该有助于为下一代噬菌体疗法设计噬菌体的未来方法，并突出有效使用这些噬菌体的最合适的临床系统。

Bacteriophages are one of the most promising alternatives to antibiotics and provide an effective tool for treating multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. Recent use of bacteriophage as drugs of last resort demonstrate they are effective in treating morbidity associated with chronic Mycobacterium infections. Yet many bacteriophages do not kill their hosts, instead lying dormant as genomic prophages. This is a major limitation of phage therapy, as it is not yet clear why different life-style strategies dominate within different hosts and environments. By using molecular cloning and chemostat based assays I will test various hypotheses that may explain variation in phage life-history traits. This should help inform future approaches to engineer phages for the next generation of phage therapy and highlight the most appropriate clinical systems for their effective use.