Tailocins are high-molecular-weight bacteriocins produced by bacteria to kill related environmental competitors by binding and puncturing their target. Tailocins are promising alternative antimicrobials, yet the diversity of naturally occurring tailocins is limited. The structural similarities between phage tails and tailocins advocate using phages as scaffolds for developing new tailocins. This article reviews three strategies for producing tailocins: disrupting the capsid-tail junction of phage particles, blocking capsid assembly during phage propagation, and creating headless phage particles synthetically. Particularly appealing is the production of tailocins through synthetic biology using phages with contractile tails as scaffolds to unlock the antimicrobial potential of tailocins.
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Characterization of tailocins of Pragia fontium 24613 and the tailocin loci within the family Budviciaceae.
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Department of Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Kamenice 753/5, 625 00, Brno, Czech Republic. Electronic address:
Article Synopsis
- Tailocins are tiny protein complexes that act like phage tails and can inhibit closely related bacterial species, with R-type being common in Gammaproteobacteria and F-type being rare.
- This study focused on a freshwater isolate, Pragia fontium 24613, which produces both R- and F-type tailocins, analyzing their ability to inhibit clinically relevant bacteria and identifying the related gene cluster.
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