This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: An estimated 38 trillion bacteria live in the human body—and only a small fraction are harmful to our health. However, the harmful ones can cause serious illness, especially when they develop resistance to antibiotics.
To overcome drug resistance and fight severe, hard-to-treat infections, researchers are turning to a type of virus found in nature that infects only bacteria: bacteriophages, or "phages" for short. A team of University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine researchers has spent the last 15 years compiling a library of phages to target especially stubborn bacteria that naturally live in the intestines. "Phages have been used historically for decades as tools to understand molecular biology, but there's been a resurgence in interest in them due to the rising incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections," says Breck Duerkop, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Immunology & Microbiology.
"We can isolate viruses against infections that are difficult to treat, and some of the viruses will kill the bacteria very readily." Just like human cells, bacterial cells can be infected by viruses. Duerkop says nearly all bacteria have viruses that infect them, so phages are found in practically any environment where bacteria live. Viruses generally aren't considered living things, but they contain genetic material (DNA or RNA), and they can use host cells to make copies of themselves.
In human cells, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, a virus gets inside a host cell by binding to a receptor on the cell surface, much like a key unlocking a door. Once inside, DNA or RNA from virus particles takes over cellular functioning and uses materials in the cell to create more virus particles, which can then infect other cells. Viruses disrupt cell activity and damage their host cells, sometimes killing them.
Phages can poke holes through cell walls and inject genetic material directly into bacterial cells. Importantly, phages can't infect human cells, but they can cause similar damage inside bacterial cells as other viruses do in human cells. Duerkop's research group finds and isolates phages to study how they kill bacteria, how bacteria may become resistant to them, and how the phages can be combined with FDA-approved drugs to treat people with serious bacterial infections.
These researchers are especially interested in treatment-resistant bacteria. They primarily study Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium, two highly drug-resistant bacterial species that normally live in the human gut without causing problems but can cause severe infections, especially in people with compromised immunity. Other antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including emerging pathogens like Enterobacter hormaechei and Klebsiella oxytoca, have also piqued the team's interest.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
