Early Use of Kinetic 96-Well Plate Readers to Study Phage-Induced Bacterial Lysis: Who Was First?

Most bacteriophages – the viruses of bacteria, commonly described simply as phages – use lysis to release virions from infected bacteria. Lysis releases other intracellular contents of cells and represents a process of more general bacterial-cell decomposition. Lysis also reduces the optical density of bacterial cultures, often substantially. Optical density is a measure of light scattering and absorbance, and is commonly used to quantify the turbidity of broth bacterial cultures. Turbidity-based approaches to studying phage-induced bacterial lysis have been used for roughly as long as phages have been recognized by science. This review examines the history of automated optical density-based explorations of phage impacts on bacterial cultures, with emphasis on published use of kinetic microtiter plate readers. A key conclusion is that the first published automated use of a kinetic-reading microtiter plate reader to study phage-induced bacterial lysis was that of Paddison et al. in 1998 (PMID: 9560373, PMCID: PMC1460109, DOI: 10.1093/genetics/148.4.1539). Challenges to that conclusion are encouraged.