Phages or help maintain human health

bacteragial experience attacks bacteria.
photo Source: AMI IMAGES/SCIENCE SOURCE
Phages are found in the faeces of World War I soldiers to kill bacteria. A century later, the virus is raising new concerns about its possible role in the human body. From the ocean to the soil, phages are almost everywhere. Now, a study shows that humans absorb up to 30 billion phages through the intestines every day.
Though it remains to be known where the virus will end up, the latest data and other studies have led scientists to question whether the large number of phages in the body, the phage group, may affect physiological function by regulating the immune system. "Basic biology tells us that phages don't interact with ethyrocytes." Jeremy Barr, a phage researcher at Monash University in Australia, says he now thinks "it's complete nonsense." Barr led the study, published in
University.
decades, most medical research on phages has focused on turning these bacterial parasites into antibiotics. Although there have been some notable success stories in phage therapy, it has not been a reliable treatment.
study of Barr suggests that phages may naturally help protect humans from pathogens. By studying animals from corals to humans, he found that, like phages that protect human gums and intestines, phages in the mucus layer are more than four times more abundant than in the surrounding environment. It has been proved that the protein exosomes of phages can bind to a mucus protein that is secreted in large quantities by the human body and together with water.
attached to the mucus allows the phage to encounter more bacterial prey. Barr has thus confirmed in a series of in-body studies that these viruses protect the underlying cells from possible bacterial pathogens, thus providing an additional layer of immunity.
, Barr has found that phages can enter the body from intestinal mucus. In laboratory petri dishes, the team found that endoculate cells arranged in the human gut, lungs, and capillaries that surround the brain absorb phages and transport them to the body. Although the transmission mechanism is still unclear, the researchers found phages wrapped in cell vesicles. They estimate that a person can absorb up to 30 billion phages a day, based on the rate at which the endoculates in the lab absorb phages.
, a molecular biologist at the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy at the Polish Academy of Sciences, said the latest study is a good example of how phages can enter the body. However, she cautions that laboratory petri dishes are not the same as the intestines of living animals, and that some of the cells used in Barr's paper are cancer cells. They may have different phage absorption rates than normal cells. (Source: Science Network Zonghua)