From our nose to our lungs to our guts, the human body is home to a diverse range of microorganisms. Such rich microbial ecosystems are prime hunting grounds for viruses that infect and kill bacteria. But how these bacteria-killing viruses interact with human cells has remained mysterious.
To his surprise, Barr instead found that mammalian cancer cells grown in the lab use the viruses as a food source. The results, published in the Oct. 26 PLOS Biology, show that it’s possible for mammalian cells to use bacteria-killing viruses as fuel — meaning normal, noncancerous cells could do it too, though this remains to be seen.
This nascent line of work upends traditional biological dogma, says Barr of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “You’re told that [phages] just do not interact with mammalian cells,” he says. “And that’s completely false. They do.”
Bacteria-killing viruses, called bacteriophages, are ubiquitous in the human body. Cells in our body ingest up to 30 billion phages each day, Barr estimates. To test how the phages interact with mammalian cells, the researchers experimented with human and dog cancer cells, mainly because they are easy to cultivate in the lab. The team grew the cancer cells in an environment flush with bacteriophage T4, a common virus that preys on E. coli.
2023-10-26 13:00:00
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