Identification and impact on virulence of mutations conferring resistance to a phage cocktail for phage therapy.

In this work, we identified the putative receptors of 16 phages and evaluated how resistance to phages recognizing different bacterial receptors may affect the virulence. Our findings are relevant for the implementation of phage therapy of infections, which are difficult to treat with antibiotics. Overall, our results highlight the need to modify natural phages to enlarge the repertoire of receptors exploited by therapeutic phages and suggest that phages using the PAO1-type T4P as receptor may have limited value for the therapy of the cystic fibrosis infection.