Phage Essay

Recently, mycobacteriophage has become an increasingly popular source of research in the western world. Phage was first discovered in 1910 by Felix d’Herelle who saw a series of plaques on a bacterial lawn [3]. After five years had passed he decided to further investigate the material contained in the plaques, which he named “Bacteriophage” [3]. Bacteriophages are a family of viruses that's main function is to infect bacterial cells. Bacteriophage contains basic physical features including a capsid (head), genomic material, and depending on the type of phage, a tail and base plate [4]. On average the size of phage has been found to be from 100-200 nm [4]. Certain researchers have proposed that phage is the most abundant life-form on the earth (1031 phages) [3]. This could be attributed to the fact that phage is very durable and can survive in close to any environment. The highest concentration of phage can be found in soil and water [3]. Phage can be put into one of two families, lytic or temperate phage. Lytic phage kills their host bacterial cell during viral replication, and will likely produce clear plaques …show more content…
Phage therapy could prove as an effective alternative to antibiotics. Phage is similar to antibiotics in the sense that it can destroy a bacterial infection but differs in the fact that the bacteria cannot develop resistance. As bacteria attempt to develop resistance to phage the phage counters by also evolving and mutating [5]. Another benefit of phage therapy is that once a phage has been applied to a bacterial infection it won’t stop until every single bacterium in the colony have been eliminated [5]. There is also an economic advantage to phage therapy and that is the low cost associated with the growth and purification of the phage, which is considerably less antibiotic production costs