5 ms·
Lately I've been wondering about phages and gut bacteria. Are there phages in the wild that affect gut bacteria, and reduce the preponderance of one species or
by beautifulfreak 10y ago
Lately I've been wondering about phages and gut bacteria. Are there phages in the wild that affect gut bacteria, and reduce the preponderance of one species or another? What if a diet pill containing phages could knock out undesirable strains of bacteria and promote weight loss? Or elevate mood? If there are such phages in the wild, is it possible that they stay with a host forever, infecting the host's gut bacteria perpetually, perhaps to ill consequence? I just wonder if anyone's looking into that.
- danieltillett 10y agoIn a former life I used to work on phages and yes there are phages that attack gut bacteria and yes they can be used to reduce one species over another. The problem is that many phages are quite narrow in specificity and will only attack single specific strains of individual bacterial species. To do what you want to do you need a very large number of different phages. There is a solution to this problem which is to isolate broad host range phages. My lab was quite successful in finding these phages. I do miss working in this area :(