Immobilization of T4 on modified silica particles

Bacteriophage provide high specificity to bacteria; receiving interest in various applications and have been used as target recognition tools in designing bioactive surfaces. Several current immobilization strategies to detect and capture bacteriophage require non-deliverable bioactive substrates or modifying the chemistry of the phage, procedures that are labor intensive and can damage the integrity of the virus. The aim of this research was to develop the framework to physisorb and chemisorb T4 coliphage on varied sized functionalized silica particles while retaining its infectivity. First, silica surface modification, silanization, altered pristine silica colloids to positively, amine coated silica. The phages remain infective to their host bacteria while adsorbed on the surface of the silica particles. It is reported that the number of infective phage bound to the silica is enhanced by the immobilization method. It was determined that covalent attachment yielded 106 PFU/ml while electrostatic attachment resulted in 105 PFU/ml.