Lysins to kill - A tale of viral weapons of mass destruction

Abstract

“Your mission should you choose to accept, is to locate the enemy, silently dock on the cell surface and inject the genetic blueprint. Once inside, you must then hijack the host’s cellular machinery and assemble multiple clones. Working quickly then, slice open the cell wall perimeter and escape to repeat the process on the remaining enemy hosts” Although farfetched, this passage describes the efficient killing machinery of bacteriophages, and depicts the events which occur millions of times in nature every day as bacteria succumb to their tiny deadly nemeses.