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A century of the phage: past, present and future

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 13, pages 777–786 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Viruses that infect bacteria (bacteriophages; also known as phages) were discovered 100 years ago. Since then, phage research has transformed fundamental and translational biosciences. For example, phages were crucial in establishing the central dogma of molecular biology — information is sequentially passed from DNA to RNA to proteins — and they have been shown to have major roles in ecosystems, and help drive bacterial evolution and virulence. Furthermore, phage research has provided many techniques and reagents that underpin modern biology — from sequencing and genome engineering to the recent discovery and exploitation of CRISPR–Cas phage resistance systems. In this Timeline, we discuss a century of phage research and its impact on basic and applied biology.

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Figure 1: Some major events in the 100 years of phage research.
Figure 2: The role of phages in bacterial pathogenicity and evolution.
Figure 3: Some phage-inspired antimicrobial approaches.

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Acknowledgements

Research in the laboratory of G.P.C.S. is supported by grants from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Cambridge Trusts, and through the financial support of the Society for General Microbiology, the Society for Applied Microbiology and the British Society for Plant Pathology. Research in the laboratory of P.C.F. is supported by the Marsden Fund, the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (RSNZ) to P.C.F., a University of Otago Research Grant, a Bequest Fund for Research in the Otago School of Medical Sciences and the Bio-Protection Centre of Research Excellence. The authors thank R. Dy for assistance with the preparation of some of the figures and R. Staals for comments on the manuscript. The authors apologize to the many phage researchers whose significant contributions could not be cited owing to space constraints.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George P. C. Salmond is at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QW, UK.,

    George P. C. Salmond

  2. Peter C. Fineran is at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.,

    Peter C. Fineran

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Salmond, G., Fineran, P. A century of the phage: past, present and future. Nat Rev Microbiol 13, 777–786 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3564

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