
Exploiting millions of years of phage-bacteriaevolution for the development of novel therapeutics called lysins.
Endolysins or lysins are bactericidal enzymes produced by bacteriophages . During their lytic life cycle in a phage-infected bacterium, phages produce lysins that are capable of cleaving bonds in the host bacterial cell wall, leading to rapid bacterial death and phage progeny release . Through millions of years of evolutionary selection, these endolysins target critical components in the peptidoglycan layer of the bacterial cell wall, making resistance to these molecules orders of magnitude less likely than conventional small molecule antibiotics . Additionally, lysins are active against their target bacteria regardless of the antibacterial resistance profiles. This unique property makes lysins ideal for the treatment of multidrug resistant bacteria