A fascinating book about the viruses that prey on bacteria, packed inspirational stories of eccentric scientists, medical miracles and how science and history affect each other
), author Tom Ireland guides us through the circuitous history of bacteriophages, from the first formal description published in the scientific literature to their role in a number of Nobel Prizes, such as the discovery of DNA and their recent contribution to cutting edge technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 — a bacterial immune system that evolved to block phage infection or replication within host cells.
Although phages are not a panacea, and the author takes pains to tell his readers this, he does describe some astonishing medical case histories and miracle cures to illustrate the promise of phage therapies when they are carefully matched to combat specific bacterial pathogens.
Phages have important roles outside of medical settings, too. We learn, for example, how scientists only recently discovered the critically important role of phages to all ecosystems on Earth, from sharing genes necessary to produce oxygen, that influence the carbon cycle or that encode toxins that bacteria can use to cause disease.
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