The Amazing Phage: The Virus that Cures Drug-Resistant Superbugs

By KD Rouse

This nonfiction work examines the bacteriophage, the world's smallest biological entity and a virus that devours bacteria. Not only can the bacteriophage cure bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics, the phage has also been an important player in the world of microbiology used in the famous Hershey Chase Blender experiment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KD Rouse
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215732939

KD Rouse

I was born in Washington DC, and raised in Burke, Virginia, in a 200 year old house. It had a secret staircase, old gravestones leading to the front door, and 1000’s of books inside. There was always something wonderful to read.It was my love of reading that led me to attend St. John’s College, in Annapolis, MD where I studied the Great Books. I subsequently graduated from UNC-Greensboro with a B.S in Elementary Education, and later an M.S.in Library and Information Studies.I am a writer of songs and stories, and more recently plays, and musicals. I have over 200 songs copyrighted with the US Library of Congress so far.I have been taking a break as a performing singer/songwriter. I was lucky enough to have played in a band, The Sams, with the late Sam Moss, and the still living Doug Williams (Electromagnetic Radiation Recorders) and Dave Seward. We opened for Southern Culture on the Skids, G-Love, Eric Johnson, and Sister Hazel, to name a few. We still have an album that will be released eventually. To hear songs I wrote, played solo, with the Sams or with KD Rouse and the Dirty Boys, a trio with myself, Troy Pierce and Randall Johnson, go to Reverb Nation.I also love to paint.

Book preview

Amazing Bacteriophage:

The Virus that cures Drug Resistant Superbugs

By Katherine Dashiell Rouse

Copyright 2023 Katherine Dashiell Rouse

Smashwords Edition

Preface

Introduction

F.W. Twort’s ‘Glassy Transformations’

Felix d’Herelle, Locusts, and Clear Spots

A Scientific Duel Decides Who Discovered the Phage

Type Specific Phages

Bacteriophage ln Action

Virulent or Temperate?

Living or Non-Living?

Where Are Phages Found?

Where Is the West with Phages?

The Phage Group

The Phage Treaty

Foe or Friend? Wineries and Living Libraries

The Phage: More to Learn

Phage Cocktails

The Phage is All the Rage

The Amazing Phage

Companies Developing Products with Phage

Bibliography

Preface

My daughter came home from high school one day and told me of a short film she had seen of a hospital room in Russia that was cleared of bacteria by spraying it with a cocktail made of bacteria eating viruses.

I am not a scientist, but I am very curious. Documented on film there was a creature that devours bacteria used in Russia to cure bacterial disease in lieu of antibiotics? Why do we not know about these bacteriophages in America, especially with our battle against drug resistant superbugs?

Everything I learned excited my imagination. The bacteriophage or phage looks like a little spaceship. It has a hexagonal baseplate that slides open in a star shape when it injects its host bacteria with DNA until the host explodes. It is so tiny it can only be seen under an electron microscope. But if the bacteriophage causes the host to lysis or burst, the phage is undetectable even under the electron microscope for 20 minutes in a mystery that still cannot be explained.

Phages have been a crucial ingredient in the discovery of DNA, used in the famous Hershey Chase Blender experiment and reportedly a catalyst for the famous scientist Schrodinger to write ‘What Is Life,’ in turn inspiring future scientists studying microbiology and genetics.

The most exciting thing of all is that the bacteriophage cures bacterial infections. A phage cocktail cured a dying man of a superbug in America recently and is chronicled in a book called The Perfect Predator A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir by Steffanie Strathdee