Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. These microscopic predators are found everywhere, from soil and water to food and the human gut. Because they attack only specific ...

Scientists mapped the Bas63 bacteriophage in unprecedented detail, uncovering how its tail machinery infects bacteria. The structure reveals rare whisker-collar features and distant evolutionary ties ...

From medicine to agriculture and aquaculture, bacteriophages are poised to have a huge global impact. As viruses which target only bacterial cells, they hold promise as an alternative to antibiotics, ...

Viral reverse transcriptase (RT) plays a critical role in replication (e.g., retroviruses, that reverse transcribe RNA templates into complementary DNA) and genome mutations (e.g., ...

Model of bacteriophages. These are viruses that multiply inside bacteria and cause their death. In some cases they are used in the fight against bacteria instead of antibiotics. shoma81/Shutterstock ...