About Bacteriophages:
- It is also called phage or bacterial virus, any of a group of viruses that infect bacteria.
- It was discovered independently by Frederick W. Twort in Great Britain (1915) and Félix d’Hérelle in France (1917).
- D’Hérelle coined the term bacteriophage, meaning “bacteria eater,” to describe the agent’s bactericidal ability.
What are the Characteristics of bacteriophages?
- Thousands of varieties of phages exist, each of which may infect only one type or a few types of bacteria or archaea.
- Phages are classified in a number of virus families; some examples include Inoviridae, Microviridae, Rudiviridae, and Tectiviridae.
- Like all viruses, phages are simple organisms that consist of a core of genetic material (nucleic acid) surrounded by a protein capsid.
- The nucleic acid may be either DNA or RNA and may be double-stranded or single-stranded.
- There are three basic structural forms of phage: an icosahedral (20-sided) head with a tail, an icosahedral head without a tail, and a filamentous form.
How they process in Human body?
- Bacteriophages are harmless to human cells as they do not recognize them as their bacterial prey.
- They work by hunting down bacteria and attaching themselves to the surface of a bacterial cell, before injecting viral DNA material into the cell.
- The viral DNA then replicates inside the bacteria, once enough new viruses have been created inside the bacterial cell, the cell then bursts to release the new viral particles.
- All this takes just 30 minutes, meaning one virus can become many in a couple of hours.
