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Phage: the robot-like virus, humanity's savior against superbugs!

Humanity's saviour against superbugs!

By Cilva KustesPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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In this article, we talk about superbugs, and bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. And as superbugs continue to mutate genetically, it is possible that shortly, extreme microorganisms will emerge that do not have any antibiotic effect. If it does come to that, once humans are infected, it will be the equivalent of declaring the punishment of S. And it is likely to continue to spread until everyone is infected, which could eventually wipe out the entire population and cause genocide.

Of course, our scientists on the front line haven't stopped fighting the superbugs. It's time to compete with superbugs. We need to find other ways to fight superbugs before they mutate into genes that can respond perfectly to all antibiotics.

We have already found a way to deal with it: phage therapy. But this method is not yet recognized. Let's learn a little about phages before we talk about this therapy.

A phage is a virus, which looks like a robot virus. When people generally see phages for the first time, they feel like they don't occur naturally on Earth at all, but are more like elaborate alien things. We don't study the origins of phages, but they do exist all around us.

Most of the phages we know of so far have icosahedral heads with hollow needle structures plus a tail sheath and a mechanical leg-like tail filament. There are other shapes of the head, such as orthotetrahedral, hexahedral, octahedral, and dodecahedral. These are the simplest structures and easiest to construct, the ortho icosahedron being the most abundant because it is closest to a sphere of the same volume and uses the least amount of material. There are also headless and tailless phosphate, which is relatively rare.

Phages are simple, just a protein shell with genetic genes, also known as nucleic acids. Different phages have different forms of nucleic acid, and there are four in total, single-stranded DNA and single-stranded RNA. each phage has only one type of nucleic acid.

Because phages are too simple to survive on their own, they can only grow and reproduce through their hosts. As can be seen from the name, the main hosts of phages are bacteria. Microorganisms such as fungi, algae, actinomycetes, or spirochetes may also be hosts of phages.

There are two ways in which phages can reproduce, but whichever one the phage parasite chooses, the host bacterium will face a terrible and painful experience. After parasitising the host bacterium, the phage will turn the host bacterium into its production tool, completely taking over the host bacterium until it is completely drained of all its use value.

The first method is very cruel. After parasitizing the host bacterium, the phage injects its genetic information into the host bacterium through its fibers and uses all the host bacterium to create daughter phages. As the daughter phage is produced in large numbers, it synthesises lytic enzymes and acts on the host bacterium. The progeny phage can then break through, expand and rediscover its new target.

The second method is milder. After parasitizing the host bacterium, the phage injects its own genetic information into the host bacterium through its fibers, but instead of actively replicating, it integrates its genes into those of the host bacterium. As the host cell replicates itself, it also replicates the phage genes, which are also separated from the progeny host. After leaving, the offspring host is lysed and grows into a new phage.

It is such a series of steps. Although the method is different, the result is the same, so whenever bacteria and other bacteria are parasitic, they face the prospect of becoming tools and then dying out.

Having said that, let's recall the phage therapy mentioned earlier. We are up against bacteria. Even though it is possible for superbugs to escape various antibiotics, in the presence of phages, superbugs can only face parasitization and destruction. This is exactly the effect we want.

Since it is feasible, we have to consider whether there are negative effects. Knowing that phages are viruses, won't viruses cause us harm? This is nothing to worry about, because so far we have not found phages to be harmful to humans, and we have phages inside us. Phages only love microorganisms such as bacteria, and it is also important to note that different phages are only effective against their own bacteria, not any phage can host any bacteria.

As I said before in The Composition of the Human Body, almost half of the human body is made up of microbial cell populations. If it were truly harmful to the human body, it would take a variety of phages that correspond to microbial cell groups in our bodies to destroy most of the microbial cell groups in our bodies. If that were the case, the human race would have ceased to exist a long time ago. So for the time being, you can rest assured.

This property of targeting only certain bacteria makes it more difficult to use phages. When a new superbug emerges, we need different phages to experiment with until we can find a functional phage. On the other hand, by using this property to attack cells with known phages, it is possible to quickly know the type of bacteria.

However, there is another reason why phage therapy has not been recognized so far. As phages are generally found in places where bacteria are abundant, the source is often poorly sanitised, making the purification of phages a very big test. Since they are intended for human use, the method cannot be approved if they will bring in other bacteria or even cause other diseases. However, some scientists have purified it to the level of medicinal use, but it is just too expensive to be widely used by people.

It seems a bit hopeless. Phages were discovered decades before antibiotics and were already being studied medically when they were discovered. But after the advent of antibiotics, its convenience made most scientists ignore phage therapy. To date, few people have heard of and used phage therapy, and it is expensive.

Phages have always been used and have contributed to humanity in the fields of molecular biology and medicine. Our nanobots were also inspired by phages and made in reference to phages. The medical use of human beings has not been greatly developed so far because they have been blinded by antibiotics. The emergence of superbugs will surely make us pay more attention to phage therapy. At the same time, it is still necessary to reduce the use of antibiotics, a combination of both for the best results!

Personally, I think it is a summary of the main points :

1. A phage is a virus that looks like a robot virus. Most of the phages we know so far have an icosahedral head and a hollow needle structure with a tail sheath plus a tail pin and a mechanical leg-like tail filament.

2. Phages are simple, just a protein shell wrapped around a genetic gene, also known as nucleic acid. There are four different forms of nucleic acids, single-stranded DNA and single-stranded RNA, and only one nucleic acid per phage.

3. because phages are too simple to survive on their own, they can only grow and reproduce if they are parasitic on a host. The main hosts of phages are bacteria, but microorganisms such as fungi, algae, actinomycetes, or spirochetes may also be hosts of phages.

4. Phages can reproduce in two ways. After parasitizing a host bacterium, the phage will turn the host bacterium into its production tool and completely occupy it until all the host bacterium's utilization value is drained.

So far, we have not found phages that can cause harm to humans, but phages are present in our bodies. Phages only love microorganisms such as bacteria, and it is also important to note that different phages are only effective against their bacteria, not any phage can parasitize any bacteria.

6. The reason why phage therapy is not recognized is because of the difficulty of purification. Although there are methods of purification, they are expensive.

7. Phages were discovered before antibiotics but were overshadowed by them.

8. Phages are also used in molecular biology and medical fields. Our nanobots were inspired by phages and made wconcerningphages.

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Cilva Kustes

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