Selective infection of E. coli as a function of a specific molecular interaction.

Selective infection of phage is when the bacterial infection depends on the specific molecular interaction between an antigen and a phage-displayed protein sequence such as an antibody. Engineering of the normal infection into pathways, directed by a specific protein--protein interaction, has raised several mechanistic questions. Here, we address the type of display and the affinity between the interacting pairs. The deleted phage R408d3 was used for the first time in selective infection and was shown to exhibit a superior performance compared to the VCSM13 phage. Furthermore, the affinity between the interacting pairs also affected the selective infection process and a correlation between affinity and infection efficiency was detected, thus implying that selective infection is the method of choice for selection of rare high-affinity interactions in molecular libraries. Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.