As antibiotic-resistant bacteria become increasingly challenging to defeat, consulting those who've been in battle with our ancient foe long before us just makes a whole lot of sense.
to examine this compartment down to the atomic scale. The protective casing was constructed from just a single type of protein, which the researchers called chimallin, after an ancient Aztec shield.Micrograph of jumbo phage-infected bacterial cell and nucleus-like compartment outlined in blue .
With the help of computer modeling, the researchers found the phage nucleus selectively allows molecules to pass through tiny pores – again similar to how cells control the environment around our genetic material, making this a remarkable example of convergent evolution – when completely unrelated organisms end up with a similar solution to the same biological problem.
Incredibly, this shield can also grow as the phage's genome replicates. The researchers aren't quite sure how phages manage this yet but suspect the compartment is probably cracking open to allow more chimallin units to join it, which are produced in abundance on infection. "Now that we know certain phages have a shield, we could give it to other phages and make 'super phages' that are better at
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