2 weeks Ago By University of California San Diego
Newswise — Antibiotic medicines became a popular treatment for bacterial infections in the early 20 th century and emerged as a transformational tool in human health. Through the middle of the century novel antibiotics were regularly developed in the medication’s golden age. But then bacteria evolved.
They found new ways to evade antibiotic treatments, rendering many useless. As new antibiotic sources dried up, bacterial infections escalated into today’s global health crisis of antibiotic resistance. Scientists now look to an unusual ally, viruses, to help counter this rising threat.
Recently, researchers have focused on viruses known as bacteriophages as a new tool to treat and disarm antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Special attention has been placed on “jumbo” phages — viruses recently discovered to feature extremely large genomes — that could be tapped as special delivery agents that can not only kill bacteria but could be engineered to deliver antibiotics directly to the source of infection. But in order to deliver novel therapeutics through phage, scientists must first understand the extraordinary biological makeup and mechanisms inside these mysterious viruses.
University of California San Diego School of Biological Sciences researchers and their colleagues at UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute and the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok have taken a substantial step forward in deciphering several key functions within jumbo phages. “These jumbo .
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