Bacteriophages are a special type of virus that infect bacteria and have amazing structural and functional diversity. When a bacteriophage infects a bacterium, it can hijack the molecular machinery of ...

In a recent study published in the journal PLoS Pathogens, researchers analyze prophages of the LF82 strain of adherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC) to better understand their behavior in vitro ...

When viral DNA is more “liquidy,” it is more easily injected into host cells—so easily, in fact, that multiple virus-carrying capsids may squeeze their DNA payloads into a host cell simultaneously.

Viruses in different life cycles can promote elemental cycling (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) by viral lysing or auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) metabolisms. Viruses can increase microbial ...