McMaster team makes discovery in ‘super-efficient’ virus-killing bacteria

A group of researchers at McMaster University who work with virus-killing bacteria have made a surprising discovery.

The team was conducting their usual lab work treating phages, which are viruses that interact with bacteria, when they noticed the specimens had joined together organically, resembling flowers.

“With a little prompting, nature had served up the very kind of structure experts in the field have been trying for decades to construct artificially – one that turns out to be 100 times more efficient than unlinked phages at finding elusive bacterial targets,” researchers said.

According to Zeinab Hosseiniedoust, who worked with the team that discovered this, “happy accidents” like this one are crucial in science.

“We try to stay curious, and so we followed that curiosity,” Hosseiniedoust said.

Researchers involved with the project also say this discovery has the potential to boost the ability for these bacteria-eating viruses to detect and treat diseases.

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