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Summary Extensive research has been conducted on the development of three groups of naturally occurring antimicrobials as novel alternatives to antibiotics: bacteriophages (phages), bacterial cell wall hydrolases (BCWH), and antimicrobial peptides (AMP). Phage therapies are highly efficient, highly specific, and relatively cost‐effective. However, precautions have to be taken in the selection of phage candidates for therapeutic applications as some phages may encode toxins and others may, when integrated into host bacterial genome and converted to prophages in a lysogenic cycle, lead to bacterial immunity and altered virulence. BCWH are divided into three groups: lysozymes, autolysins, and virolysins. Among them, virolysins are the most promising candidates as they are highly specific and have the capability to rapidly lyse antibiotic‐resistant bacteria on a generally species‐specific basis. Finally, AMP are a family of natural proteins produced by eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms or encoded by phages. AMP are of vast diversity in term of size, structure, mode of action, and specificity and have a high potential for clinical therapeutic applications.

The widespread resistance to antibiotics among pathogenic bacteria has made development of alternatives to antibiotics a pressing public concern. Extensive studies have established bacteriophages (phages) and phage-encoded lytic enzymes (virolysins) as two of the most promising families of alternative antibacterials for the treatment and prophylaxis of bacterial infections. They have shown great potential in veterinary and human medicine for the treatment and prophylaxis of infections. Technologies have also been patented employing phages and virolysins in other pathogen related applications including detection and decontamination.

Abstract

This is a response to the letter of Biziulevicius and Kazlauskaite, who made a few valuable comments on our recent paper published on the Journal of Applied Microbiology regarding the classification and potential clinic applications as alternative antibiotics of bacterial cell wall hydrolases (BCWH). We confirm that it is of significant practical and theoretical relevance to categorize BCWH according to their sources owing to their strikingly different antibacterial specificities, which are of critical importance to their potential clinic applications. Among the three groups of lytic enzymes, i.e. lysozymes, microlysins and virolysins, virolysins seem to be the most promising alternative antibiotics as a result of a few unique characteristics of this group of lytic enzymes.

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