Akos Nyerges (Harvard Medical School) and colleagues published a new paper on developing a genetic firewall to prevent viral infections and gene transfer in organisms, which could be used to make any organism resistant to all natural viruses and prevent genetic information flow into and out of genetically modified organisms.
In a new preprint, Rebekah Silva and colleagues from New England Biolabs report the first in vitro reconstitution of phage Mu’s DNA hypermodification (glycine harvested from tRNA to hypermodify adenine) from purified components.
In a new paper in Scientific Reports, Nader Abdelhamied (Zewail City of Science and Technology, Egypt) and colleagues describe a new phage-based biosensor for the detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7.
In a new paper in PHAGE, Janet Nale (University of Leicester) and colleagues examine the activity of phages to control the growth of chicken and swine Salmonella strains in avian, porcine, and human cell cultures. They found that a six-phage cocktail was most effective in preventing bacterial growth.
The Scottish Health Technologies Group has published advice on the use of phage therapy for the Scottish National Health Service. It recommends that phage therapy may be appropriate for patients with difficult to treat bacterial infections given it has been supported by a small number of randomized controlled trials.
