471: Phage Fight Foils Fitness

This episode: A phage both kills bacterial pathogens and selects
for reduced virulence!


Download Episode (6.3 MB, 9.9 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Helminthosporium victoriae 145S virus


 


News item

 



Takeaways



Using bacteria-killing viruses to treat bacterial
infections, or phage therapy, can be a good alternative to
antibiotics in some situations when there are no effective
antibiotics for a particular infection. But bacteria can
evolve resistance to phages as well as antibiotics, often
with little cost to their fitness.

In this study, a phage not only could treat an infection by
attacking the bacteria, but the bacterial hosts that do
evolve resistance to the phage do so by getting rid of
certain structures that help them to cause more serious
infection. Thus, therapy with this phage may both reduce
the bacterial load and also make those remaining less
virulent.


 
Journal Paper:
Kortright KE, Done RE, Chan BK, Souza V, Turner PE. 2022.
Selection for Phage Resistance Reduces Virulence of Shigella
flexneri. Appl Environ Microbiol 88:e01514-21.




Other interesting stories:



Plastic-eating bacteria could produce biodegradable plastic

Harmless variant of acne bacteria could help prevent more
serious skin infection




 


Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot
com. Thanks for listening!


Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Android, or RSS.
Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show
at Twitter or Facebook.