We are slowly running out of ammunition to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria. Listener Peter wants to know whether a therapy that he’d heard about in the 1980s could be revived to help us where antibiotics falls short.CrowdScience travels to Georgia where “phages”, viruses that hunt and kill bacteria, have been used for nearly 100 years…
Bacteria have a sneaky evolutionary advantage: their own version of the internet for swapping survival solutions. It’s a living network of viruses that can shuttle genetic information between unrelated cells. Known as transduction, this process is one of the ways that bacteria can bypass the generation-by-generation plodding of vertical inheritance and instead share information horizontally,…
Bacteriophages are “bacteria eaters” in that they are viruses that infect and destroy bacteria. Sometimes called phages, these microscopic organisms are ubiquitous in nature. In addition to infecting bacteria, bacteriophages also infect other microscopic prokaryotes known as archaea. This infection is specific to a specific species of bacteria or archaea. A phage that infects E. coli for instance, will not infect anthrax bacteria. Since…
Pranav Johri completed five rounds of antibiotics to treat a persistent prostate problem in his early 30s, but his case flummoxed doctors because the medicine seemed to make him worse. “My entire life had become so limited,” says the 35-year-old workaholic from India’s capital city, recalling how he couldn’t summon strength for much more than…
A bacteriophage is a type of virus that infects bacteria. In fact, the word “bacteriophage” literally means “bacteria eater,” because bacteriophages destroy their host cells. All bacteriophages are composed of a nucleic acid molecule that is surrounded by a protein structure. A bacteriophage attaches itself to a susceptible bacterium and infects the host cell. Following…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qTqJITdpMko&feature=youtu.be Finding an effective alternative to antibiotics has become a critical necessity in modern medicine. As global resistance grows, phage therapy stands out as the most reliable and effective alternative to antibiotics for patients battling chronic infections. This video explains why bacteriophages are a safe, non-toxic, and highly effective alternative to antibiotics, targeting only harmful…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTwEVK7TMWI During the Cold War, while the West focused on antibiotics, researchers in Georgia perfected a unique medical weapon. The secret Soviet virus, known as a bacteriophage, was developed to target and destroy specific harmful bacteria with surgical precision. Unlike broad-spectrum drugs, the secret Soviet virus does not harm the body’s natural microbiome, making it…
Acinetobacter baumannii is a gram-negative, non-motile bacterium that, due to its multidrug resistance, has become a major nosocomial pathogen. The increasing number of multidrug resistant (MDR) strains has renewed interest in phage therapy. The aim of our study was to assess the effectiveness of phage administration in Acinetobacter baumannii wound infections in an animal model to demonstrate phage…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7RSSNufzSYM&feature=youtu.be The history of medicine in Georgia holds a remarkable legacy that is now gaining global attention. This unique Stalin-era phage treatment was developed in Tbilisi as a sophisticated way to combat bacterial infections without relying on standard drugs. While the rest of the world focused on penicillin, local scientists perfected this Stalin-era phage treatment…
Bacteriophages are the most numerous viruses on Earth, and viruses are more common than bacteria, the most numerous of cellular organisms. Specifically, bacteriophages are the viruses of bacteria, that is, they are sequences of genes (genomes) which move around from bacterium to bacterium while encased within protein shells called capsids, often killing bacteria in the process. Bacteriophages are hugely important to the ecology and evolution of bacteria, have enormous impacts on the global carbon cycle (which among other things controls whether climates globally warm), represent one promising means by which medicine‘s current antibiotic crisis –…