Introduction

Welcome to PhaLP: the database of Phage Lytic Proteins.

Phage lytic proteins are currently the most advanced alternative antibacterials under clinical investigation. These enzymes originate from bacteriophages and rapidly degrade bacterial peptidoglycan, resulting in immediate cell death. They offer a necessary response to the alarming threat of antibiotic resistance on global health care systems. One of the most important features of phage lytic proteins is that they can be considered as a novel class of antibiotics, coined enzybiotics, with the potential of targeting any specific bacterial pathogen. A growing community of companies and researchers is therefore investigating their applications and engineering their properties to kill a broad diversity of bacteria. Considering the high attrition rates during clinical evaluation, it is essential to get a higher number of candidates in the preclinical pipeline for a guaranteed translation of phage lytic proteins into diverse new therapies. To be successful, it is crucial to make well-considered selections of phage lytic proteins during early research stages.
The PhaLP database provides an extensive, high-quality and up-to-date collection of data that is highly searchable by researchers in and outside the field. It serves as a portal to interact with the current diversity available in biological databases. Next to basic sequence data, the PhaLP database provides information on the protein sequence, coding domain sequence (CDS), phage, its host(s), conserved domains, enzymatic activity, gene ontologies, 3D structures, experimental evidence, etc.