Targeted drugs could kill only harmful bugs

摘要

Set your phages to stun. Researchers have devised a way to engineer a class of bacteria-destroying viruses to make them more clinically useful. The phage viruses could eventually be used to kill disease-causing bacteria in the body while leaving our "good" bacteria unharmed. Many phage viruses infect and replicate inside bacteria, killing them. This makes phages a possible alternative to antibiotics as resistance to these drugs grows. What's more, most phages infect only one species or even a few strains within a species; antibiotics aren't so selective.