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Expanding The Horizons Of Enzybiotic Identification, Jonathan Edward Schmitz

Student Theses and Dissertations

Recently, phage lytic enzymes (also known as endolysins or, simply, lysins) have received considerable attention as potential antibacterial agents. During the infective cycle of double-stranded DNA phage, these peptidoglycan hydrolases are responsible for digesting the cell wall of the host bacterium and freeing newly-assembled viral particles. At the same time, an increasing body of evidence has demonstrated that recombinantly-purified phage lysins—when added exogenously—can potently kill Gram-positive bacteria, whose peptidoglycan is accessible from the extracellular space. Consequently, lysins have been proposed as novel enzybiotic (i.e. enzyme-antibiotic) molecules that could serve as novel weapons in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria. Most lysins …