Figure 1.

Synthetic phage engineering strategies. Major strategies for modifying the target recognition site (tail), phage head (hexagonal), or genome (tangled lines) are depicted. The bacterial host spectrum of a phage can be expanded or redirected by tail shuffling (orange), while mammalian host immune responses can be reduced or minimized by insertional inactivation of the endolysin gene (red triangle) or capsid modification (green circles). Heterologous effector genes (yellow rectangle) can also be installed on the phage genome to maximize the antibacterial efficacy.