Precipitation of filamentous bacteriophages for their selective recovery in primary purification

Filamentous bacteriophages and their derivatives are showing great promise as a whole new class of industrial agents, such as biologically based nano-materials and viral vectors. This raises challenges for their large-scale manufacture, principally due to the lack of bioprocessing knowledge. This article addresses what will be a potentially important option in the primary purification of the bacteriophages. Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-salt dual precipitants, calcium ions, spermidine, and isoelectric precipitation were first examined for their potential suitability for bacteriophage concentration under both pure and broth conditions. Successful precipitants were further studied on the basis of their selective purification ability from DNA and protein contaminants in a clarified broth system. Both PEG-based and isoelectric precipitations resulted in bacteriophage purity improvements, and PEG-based precipitations offered the highest selectivities. This work shows that precipitation of bacteriophages can be an effective primary purification step in a large-scale bioprocess.