title: Bacteriophage-based synthetic biology for the study of infectious diseases.
abstract: Since their discovery, bacteriophages have contributed enormously to our understanding of molecular biology as model systems. Furthermore, bacteriophages have provided many tools that have advanced the fields of genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Here, we discuss bacteriophage-based technologies and their application to the study of infectious diseases. New strategies for engineering genomes have the potential to accelerate the design of novel phages as therapies, diagnostics, and tools. Though almost a century has elapsed since their discovery, bacteriophages continue to have a major impact on modern biological sciences, especially with the growth of multidrug-resistant bacteria and interest in the microbiome.
authors.affiliation: MIT Microbiology Program, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.|MIT Synthetic Biology Center, 500 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Citorik
authors.affiliation: MIT Microbiology Program, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.|MIT Synthetic Biology Center, 500 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mimee
authors.affiliation: MIT Microbiology Program, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.|MIT Synthetic Biology Center, 500 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.|Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.|Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Timothy K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D001435:Bacteriophages; D003141:Communicable Diseases; D012106:Research / Q000639:trends; D058615:Synthetic Biology