New paper: Viral Tag & Grow: a scalable method to capture & characterize virus-host pairs with flow cytometry and plating

A new research article from Dr. Ho Bin Jang (a former postdoc in the Sullivan Lab), describes an improved laboratory method, ‘Viral Tag and Grow’, that enables high-throughput capture and characterization of virus-host pairs. This entails using a host bacterium in culture, to which a collection of phage can be applied to monitor, via flow cytometry and subsequent plating – if a successful phage infection has occurred. The novelty of this method is due to the ‘Grow’ component, which provides robust evidence that a  virus-host pair is biologically viable. In addition, this method is scalable, which is ideal if hundreds of phages are to be tested against a host.