Bacteriofiles

This episode: This episode: A bacteriophage and bacterial predator can wipe out a population of bacteria that could develop resistance to each individually! Thanks to Laura Hobley, J. Kimberley Summers, and Jan-Ulrich Kreft for their contributions!   Also a note: I will be taking a short break from podcasts while I rebuild my collection of awesome microbiology stories to talk about. Download Episode (6.8 MB, 9.9 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Blackbird associated gemycircularvirus 1 Takeaways Bacteriophages and bacterial predators that prey on other bacteria are both very good at killing large numbers of bacteria. But bacteria as a whole are also very good at surviving being killed in large numbers; there are almost always a few that have the right genes to overcome whatever is doing the killing. This is what makes the threat of antibiotic resistance so scary, and why phage therapy is both very promising and very limited.   In this study, however, a combination of phages and the bacterial pre