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Bacteriophages: Our friendly neighbourhood





Bacteriophages are the virus. These are non-cellular organisms. Thus they are not considered as living. They seem to be mechanical as someone made them. They are motile. Consists of a crystalline head, collar, sheath and tail fibres. They contain RNA as genetic material.   

They found everywhere from eyes to eyelids. They found much more than any organism. They are the deadliest being on the planet. They daily kill 40% of bacteria in the oceans. They are much smaller than our cells and bacterias. They are known as bacteriophages because of they phages bacteria. Each bacteriophage terminates specific bacteria.

When bacteriophage finds it's victim, then it injects its genetic material inside the bacteria. This produces many new phages inside the bacteria body, which releases an enzyme called endolysin. This enzyme punches the hole and causes bacteria to burst. With the burst, those bacteriophages come out in the environment. Fortunately, bacteriophages can't harm us even when our cell and it encounters each other because bacteriophage ignores our cells as the human cell is not it's a specific victim.


Till 200 years ago a single cut sometimes kills a person due to bacterial infections and luckily we found an antibiotic from algae called Penicillin. But due to more use of antibiotics bacteria get evolved and immune to it and antibiotics also kills the good bacteria of our body. 




When bacterias get evolved it becomes a superbug but, bacteriophages can destroy them. With the evolution of bacteria, bacteriophages also evolve. Bacteria who get immune against them, lose its resistance to antibiotics.


 A few years ago an old man gets infected poorly by bacteria named as Pseudomonas Aeruginosa in his chest cavity. This bacteria is naturally resisted to many antibiotics and can even survive in alcohol. In the end, doctors experimentally inject bacteriophage into his chest cavity and within a week the patient gets cured completely.


The bacteriophages are our friendly neighbourhood.






















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