CAREER: Designing safe and effective phage cocktails for precise microbial control in water systems

Controlling the growth of unwanted bacteria in our water systems is costly. This project plans to use viruses, the natural killers of bacteria, to control the bacteria growth. In nature, every type of bacteria can be infected by at least one type of virus known as a bacteriophage.

This CAREER project will develop methods to discover the mixtures of naturally occurring bacteriophages (called bacteriophage cocktails) that are effective at killing bacteria. The research will identify why some bacteriophage cocktails work better than others. The project will also build relationships between researchers and the water industry to teach practitioners how to use bacteriophages to control bacteria in water systems.

The project will provide opportunities for high school students, undergraduates and graduate students to participate in the research.

New methods of microbial control are needed to protect public health from exposure to disinfection byproducts, opportunistic pathogens, and antibiotic resistance in drinking water, while reduce the economic costs of biofouling and biocorrosion control in water distribution system. One alternative to traditional microbial control processes is to specifically tune the bacterial community of water systems using mixtures of bacteriophages to kill the bacteria.

Currently, the design of these mixtures (bacteriophage cocktails) is slow and laborious, relying on trial and error to identify the most effective combinations of bacteriophages. This CAREER project will develop a platform for the rational design of bacteriophage cocktails, based on the hypothesis that safe and effective bacteriophage cocktails will have specific gene and transcript (mRNA) profiles that are distinct from those that have antagonistic or off-target effects.

The research will address the following objectives: (1) identify genetic and transcriptomic markers of synergistic versus antagonistic bacteriophage cocktail interactions and (2) assess off-target infection risks using experimental and computational approaches. The education objectives will (1) ensure that students have the skills for further developing bacteriophage biocontrol technologies by creating educational materials and hands-on bacteriophage discovery experiences for high school and college students and (2) encourage knowledge exchange between researchers and practitioners by convening a practitioner advisory board.

This project will contribute to the development of a systematic understanding of the features of safe and effective bacteriophage cocktails. Together, the tightly coupled research and educational objectives of this CAREER project will accelerate the development of improved microbial control technologies, reducing the costs of unwanted microbial growth and better protecting human health.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.