Researchers develop a new means of killing harmful bacteria
The global rise in antibiotic resistance is a growing threat to public health, damaging our ability to fight deadly infections such as tuberculosis. What’s more, efforts to develop new antibiotics are not keeping pace with this growth in microbial resistance, resulting in a pressing need for new approaches to tackle bacterial infection. In a paper published online in the journal Nano Letters, researchers at MIT, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard University reveal that they have developed a new means of killing harmful bacteria. The researchers have engineered particles, known as “phagemids,” capable of producing toxins that are deadly to targeted bacteria. Bacteriophages — viruses that infect and kill bacteria — have been used for many years to treat infection in countries such as those in the former Soviet Union. Unlike traditional broad-spectrum antibiotics, these viruses target specific bacteria without harming the body’s normal microflora. But bacteriophages can also cause potentially harmful...