Viruses to Fight Superbugs? Scientists Are Working on It
September 26, 2022
(Wired) – Not only do you need to find the right phages for a particular bacterial infection, then—they must also be lytic ones. But many phages in Hatfull and his team’s collection are temperate, including two of the three they wanted to combine into a cocktail to treat this patient. Their solution? Genome editing. They engineered the genomes of the phages such that they would always be lytic, by removing the genes needed for lysogeny. By doing this, Hatfull explains, “We’ve essentially converted a naturally occurring temperate phage into one that’s now lytic, and essentially moved it from the ‘can’t use’ category into the ‘potential use’ category.” (Read More)