ABSTRACT
Bacteriophages, popularly known as phages, are parasitic to bacteria and archaea. Phages were used in developing phage therapy and cloning vectors for a long time. Recently, phages are used in biosensors and are considered as a wonderful probe molecule for detecting biomarkers and specific bacterial cells. The high throughput molecular technique termed phage display is being used as a tool for target-specific display and screening of peptides, proteins, and antibodies. Currently, phage display has proven to be an alternative to conventional antibody-based assays, and it allows conjugation or manipulation at the genetic level. Phage-displayed ligands are widely used as an affinity reagent in diagnostic biosensors. Phage-based ligands are easy to produce, less expensive, highly specific, and highly stable to different extreme conditions. To date, there are many different phage display-based sensors and assays that have been developed including optical sensors such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR), piezoelectric devices such as quartz crystal microbalance (QCM-D), and electrochemical sensors based on impedimetric, etc. In this chapter, we are focusing on different biosensing platforms where phage entities are used as ligands or receptors for the biosensing purpose, with an emphasis on the phage display technique.
