Antibiotic resistance is a serious public health problem today. Phages can come to the aid of trying to fix the problem.
The abuse of these drugs and their misuse are the main reasons why bacteria undergo mutations and acquire multiresistant genes. This ability helps them escape the effects of antibiotics, proliferating and growing in the presence of them.
We will tell you below about one of the most interesting and used therapies to fight this problem.
What is a bacteriophage?
A bacteriophage, also known as a phage, is a virus that infects and kills bacteria. It has a genetic material, which can be DNA or RNA, protected by a capsid.
When it meets a bacterium, it interacts with it, attaching itself to specific receptors on its surface. There it injects its genome into the bacterial cell. At this moment two life cycles can be carried out:
Lytic cycle: phages act like a typical virus. They use the bacterial machinery to multiply and release new phages, causing the death of the bacteria.
Lysogenic cycle: the genetic material of the phage is integrated into the genome of the host cell, so that the phage will reproduce without killing it. When the bacteria divide, they will make copies of their genetic material along with that of the phage, so that the phage will be in future descendant cells.
Phages are microorganisms that are found in all ecosystems on Earth. They are both in the oceans, in the air and inside the human body.
They are regulating bacterial populations. Thanks to them, the bacterial microbiota remain stable and balanced in living beings.
In addition, they are considered the most abundant organisms on our planet, to such an extent that in 1989 Norwegian scientists found 250 million phages in one milliliter of seawater.
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