The processes for bacteriophage isolation are a key subject of study for efficient phage hunting, which represents the main way of discovery of novel bacteriophages capable of infection antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria. These are highly medically relevant as an alternative to antibiotics, which are inefficient in combating certain infections, and are able to be found almost anywhere in the envirnment due to their ubiquity. Numerous methods for bacteriophage isolation have been developed, four of which have been tested and compared in the scope of this work. Of the tested procedures, anion exchange chromatography yielded the highest recovery, although with also the highest financial cost per processed sample and the highest level of complexity of execution. Batch chromatography using hydroxyapatite represents a cheaper and simpler alternative with comparable recovery but a significantly larger standard error, while precipitation with polyethylene gylcol remains an even cheaper alternative, which suffers from a significantly worse recovery. The phage suspension enrichment method was not performed successfully with the chosen procedure, hence it wasn't compared with the rest of the methods. The optimal choice of method for phage hunting, as indicated by the findings of this work, is therefore subject to the needs and resources of the phage hunter.
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