“…Off-target binding of interferents can hinder biofunctionalization, obscure the transduction of specific interaction events, and decrease the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the case of biosensors and generally compromise reproducibility, even when phage infectivity is not impacted. 51 For this reason, a common unit operation in phagefunctionalization is to follow conjugation with a blocking step, whereby the surface is flooded with an amphiphilic biological species (e.g., casein 78,168 or bovine serum albumin (BSA) 110,184 ), synthetic polymer (e.g., PEG 183,256 ), or aminepresenting molecule (e.g., ethanolamine 64,155 ) that will occupy nonfunctionalized sites on the surface without impeding the sensitivity of the functionalized sites. In this way, the nonspecific binding of proteins, and other components of the sample, is reduced, while specific reactions with the target analyte are (ideally) unaffected.…”