Mycobacteriophages

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect the mycobacteria Historically, they have been used to overcome major road blocks in the genetic manipulation of mycobacteria. Mycobacteriophages have been used to demonstrate mycobacterlal transfection (1 ) and transduction (2 ). Additionally, difficulties in transformation were solved using shuttle phasmids (3 ,4 ), which are chimeras of mycobacteriophage and plasmid DNA that can replicate as plasmids in Escherichia coli and phages in mycobacteria.