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Phage display is a molecular biology technique that allows the presentation of foreign peptides on the surface of bacteriophages. It is widely utilized for applications such as the discovery of biomarkers, the development of therapeutic antibodies, and the investigation of protein–protein interactions. When employing phages in diagnostic and therapeutic monitoring assays, it is essential to couple them with a detection system capable of revealing and quantifying the interaction between the peptide displayed on the phage capsid and the target of interest. This process is often technically challenging and costly. Here, we generated a fluorescent helper phage vector displaying sfGFP in-frame to the pIII of the capsid proteins. Further, we developed an exchangeable dual-display phage system by combining our newly developed fluorescent helper phage vector with a phagemid vector harboring the engineered pVIII with a peptide-probe. By doing so, the sfGFP and a peptide-probe are displayed on the same phage particle. Notably, our dual-display approach is highly flexible as it allows for easy exchange of the displayed peptide-probe on the pVIII to gain the desired selectivity, while maintaining the sfGFP gene, which allows easy visualization and quantification of the interaction peptide-probe. We anticipate that this system will reduce time and costs compared to the current phage-based detection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bacteria wall fulfills important physiological functions at the cell, depending on its composition and organization. Many researches focused their studies in understanding the change of its properties not only in strength and permeability, but also in morphological plasticity due to both chemical and physical stresses. In particular, filamentation morphology is a cryptic phenomenon, with involve for great variety of bacteria, which allow them to acquire adaptive benefits. This phenotypic alteration consists of an alteration or lack of cell septation during the cell growth, as consequence of DNA damage or development of stress, such as nutritional factors, antibiotic resistance, low temperature, non-availability of oxygen, high osmolarity, and antimicrobial agents. These cells result in modification of elongation 10–50 times, thickness, chemical composition, and extent of cross-linking of the cell wall polymers than normal-shaped cells. Moreover, the advancement in the morphology engineering permitted the manipulation of the genes encoding the proteins belonging to the plasma membrane or cytoplasm, to have the control over the bacterial shapes and of the its cytoplasmatic environment. In biotechnology application, the intracellular space is primary used for a greater accumulation of secondary products, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). This review provides an insight into environmental induction of filamentation morphology and its use in biotechnological process. Key points: • Environmental stresses inducing filamentation morphology • Morphology engineering in biotechnological processes • Increase of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]