Could we use viruses that only affect bacteria to act as antibiotics?
The more bacteria, the more times the virus divides, so the stronger it gets. Is this practical?
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Sign up to join this communityCould we use viruses that only affect bacteria to act as antibiotics?
The more bacteria, the more times the virus divides, so the stronger it gets. Is this practical?
Could we use viruses that only affect bacteria to act as antibiotics?
Yes. The specific class you're referring to is called a "bacteriophage".
There's quite a bit of research going on surrounding phage therapy as a stand-in or replacement for traditional antibiotics. Here's a Nature Biotechnology article from 2004 that discusses your very topic.
It is practical, carries some risks (mutations being a known and accepted risk), and I wouldn't be surprised to see phages in practice now or sometime soon.
Yes you could.
It used to be a big deal before antibiotics were discovered, and continued for a bit in the Soviet Union.
However, due to the success of antibiotics, it fell out of grace. Due to the lower level of applied research in the Soviet Union (not research itself, although equipment might have been often outdated a bit and the Soviets did isolate themselves quite a bit, but a great deal of research originally discovered behind the Iron Curtain was actually commercialized in the US, such as contact lenses; many Soviet research projects are actually getting rediscovered, such as the great experiment about the domestication of foxes), it never became the thing, and after the fall of the SU, it was nearly forgotten.
However, now it is becoming trendy again. There are several reasons: