An Overview of Filamentous Bacteriophages for Phage display and its potential clinical applications

Viruses are a transition between living and non-living organisms. Their biological machinery is tailored in collaborating with cellular organisms to very effectively reproduce themselves. This inherent potential of hi jacking the transcription and translation machinery of the cell, and picking up and moving about DNA from the organisms with which they interact is exploited by the biologists. Bacteriophage is a kingdom of viruses that infect bacteria, and filamentous bacteriophages which are made up of long, thin filaments containing a circular single-stranded DNA genome which reproduce without killing the host, belong to genus Inovirus. This review article is an overview of filamentous bacteriophages, various vectors developed for use in the molecular biology and gene cloning. However, the major emphasis of the review is on their use in phage display technology. Although selection of proteins is the main feature of this technology, it has been modified to be utilized for diverse applications. A comprehensive detail of all the applications is beyond the scope of this review, so recent developments using phage display in cancer diagnosis and therapy are discussed in this article.