How Bacteriophages Work

In October 2026 researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported that picobirnaviruses, common gut viruses long thought to infect animal cells, infect a gut bacterium instead. This film explains the established biology behind that news: what a virus is, the discovery of bacteriophages by Twort and d'Hérelle, the anatomy of phage T4, the lytic cycle from attachment to the burst, why one phage makes a visible plaque, the lysogenic cycle of phage lambda, the Hershey–Chase experiment that showed genes are DNA, CRISPR as bacterial immunity and the genetic scissors it led to, how many phages there are in the sea and the gut, and the history and present limits of phage therapy.

The bacteria eaters

How the viruses that hunt bacteria work, and what they taught us.

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