• Question: would you ever make a bacteria strong anoth to kill all the horrible bugs ?

    Asked by to Ruth on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ruth Nottingham

      Ruth Nottingham answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      It unlikely that one bacteria would be able to kill all the disease causing bacteria.
      The bacteria I work on can (we think!) kill all of one group of bacteria ( called gram negative bacteria), but there are good bacteria in this group too! So we have to work out a way to make the killing selective for only the bad microbes.

      Another cool way to kill horrible bacteria is to use a ‘bacteria virus’ called a bacteriophage. These can infect bacteria and make them sick! There are lots of different bacteria viruses and they are more selective about which bacteria they kill 🙂 meaning the good bacteria could live!

Comments