As the medical world witnesses the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, bacteriophages become more of an option to treat bacterial infections. By infecting bacteria with their DNA, bacteriophages can eventually eliminate a culture of bacteria within a body. While United States doctors halted the use of bacteriophages for treatment, called phage therapy, before World War I, other countries in Eastern Europe continue to perform therapy on patients. Understanding why phage therapy has potential to replace antibiotics requires a knowledge of the process in which a bacteriophage infects a bacterium. In his online microbiology textbook, Professor Kaiser observes a bacteriophage infecting and killing a bacterium in a process called lysis. First, the virus absorbs into the cell wall, and injects its genome, or the DNA required to make more viruses (2018, 10.7A, para. 1, 2). When a bacteriophage looks for a host cell, it generally only preys upon one species of bacteria. Next, the DNA halts all cell processes and forces the cell to reproduce its own …show more content…
In her paper “Advancing Phage Therapy,” Joanna Urban introduces research indicating that some bacteriophage destroy bacteria more completely than others, causing all genes to become useless. However, after some bacteria burst from lysis, intact genes from DNA are transferred from a dying bacteria to a living one (2017, para. 5,6). Unfortunately, a bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics is a gene transferable after lysis. Urban deemed bacteriophages who incompletely destroy bacteria “superspreaders,” and suggests avoiding using them for any medicinal purposes (2017, para. 4). As large of a problem this seems to the applicability of phage therapy, researching effective strains of phage before administering them as treatment predominantly ends any qualms with