I found a bacteria-eating virus in my loo

I am in a microbial savior – a type of virus that can treat infections instead of causing them.

We all know the viral bad guys – Covid, Flu, Norovirus, Herpes, Chickens, Maffle… The list continues.

However, there is a kind of virus that is not interested in infiltrating our bodies, instead it hunts bacteria.

They are known as bacteria eaters or bacteriophages or often as wajs.

Catching them can give new ways to treat infections, including super insects that become cursed.

So, how is a killer caught?

I promised surprisingly easy. Set Faj collection project He sent me some bottles to collect samples with a pair of gloves. All I have to do is hunt a little dirty water, more dirty, better, sink the bottles and screw it to the cover.

I tried a few ponds, a worm composting garbage box and I needed my most dirty example. After a poop, I didn’t wash the toilet and left it for a few hours. I stand on a glove and hold my breath as I go in for the last example. Solid hygiene instructions, including strong hand washing, were followed.

I went to Southampton University to see what happened inside three days later.

Faj scientist Michelle Lin, blue laboratories and matching gloves storage level 2 to enter the Microbiology Laboratory because we did not do “they were a little dirty when I took them.”

We take my samples from the refrigerator, now they are filtered from the wreckage. “It’s not a problem,” Michelle, who has an unpleasant job, guarantees me.

Filtering is the first step of the search for faja, then they serve a cocktail of exquisite bacteria to help them grow in number.

Now something really great comes – finding a useful waj. Scientists work with the local hospital to collect bacteria from patients with laborious infections.

Michelle captures a petri dinner that enlarges bacteria from a patient with painful, urinary tract infection.

And for my astonishment – one of the waves I collected from my toilet was able to kill this infection in the laboratory.

“The way to see the bacteria infected bacteria is that you take places where bacteria are not growing, and because they have been killed by Faj.” Says.

You can see the leopard printing pattern on the Petri plate where a bacterial infection in which the waist struggles to change.

“Wrapping to the ear, well done to the toilet example,” says Michelle with great pleasure.

And when I was offered a chance to name the wage, of course this Gallagher-Fage.

“It sounds great to me,” says Michelle.

So far, this laboratory has been very fun, but can a patient be given to a patient?

While looking at the images of my fajim caught with electron microscope, Associate Professor Dr. “Yes, and I hope,” Franklin Nobrega says.

Dr Nobrega, “Your Fajiz, we have already been able to enter a high concentration in 24 hours and we could have been a very good killer, which is very promising for patients, so thank you.” He said.

Faj reminds me of Lander for a month – a large capsule in the disgusting legs – using their legs to choose their victims instead of going down to the surface of the moon.

They then kidnap the bacteria and transform them into a mass production factory for more faj, who explodes and kills from their homeowners.

There are pros and cons for wajs. They multiply as they progress, so that you do not need fixed doses as in drugs.

They are also very selective eaters. You need a definite match between the faj and the bacterial strain you are trying to treat, whereas antibiotics tend to kill everything well and badly. So it is more difficult to find the right faj, but if you do, it comes with less side effects.

Dr Nobrega tells me that infected wounds are a “very good application” for faja because you can apply them directly to injury, but they can breathe through a nebulizer to treat lung infections or “to target urinary tract infections that are currently our target.

Faj science may seem new and exciting, but in fact, in the 1910s, Felix d’érelle and Frederick Twort is a century -old idea of ​​the discoveries.

Bacteriophage therapy was a branch of medicine and the idea was compulsive. Even in the late 1940s, there was an active pharmaceutical industry in Western countries that tried to produce wage therapy to overcome bacterial infections.

However, it was rapidly held by the wonder of the 20th century.

“Antibiotics worked so well that most people said ‘why uncomfortable’.

Studies on Faj Therapy continued in places like Georgia and have individual accounts that create wonders; However, there was no depth of medical research and clinical studies as for drugs.

However, the first success of antibiotics revives the excitement in their potential for failure of antibiotics as if they suppressed waj research.

More than a million people a year He is already dying from infections caused by treatment -resistant microbes – he is known as “silent pandemia”. By 2050, this figure is expected to reach 10 million a year.

This “antibiotic apocalypse” means that widespread infections can be killed again and weaken modern medicine. Drugs are also used to make organ transplantation, open surgery and chemotherapy possible.

“The estimates about antibiotic resistance are very scary, but the truth is that we see it, and it will just get worse,” Prof Paul Elkington, Director of the Institute of Medical Innovation of Southampton University, says.

At the same time, a doctor with lung medical specialty, and after one year of treatment and after returning to more toxic and less effective antibiotics – “you should finally make a speech. [and say] ‘We can’t cure this infection, we’re really sorry’ ‘.

He says that we cannot trust only antibiotics in the future and that the waj is a potential alternative.

However, it warns the steps to take from the laboratory and “undiscovered” to patients.

Things are changing. Faj Therapy is available in the UK for compassionate reasons when other treatments fail. And medicine regulator – Pharmaceuticals and Health Products Regulatory Agency – published its first official rules to support the development of phaja therapy.

“If it appears for 15-20 years in the future, it will be possible for doctors to prescribe a phage instead of antibiotics for some infections,” Profel Elkington said, with developing methodologies. “

If you want to see if you can find a friendly virus, the Faj collection project starts new sampling kits. Summer Sciences Exhibition This week at Royal Society and Their website.

“Antimicrobial resistance is something that can affect us all,” says the Faj Collection Project Esme Brinsden, “they can find the next fage that can help treat and save a patient’s life when the public is involved”.

Photography by BBC’s Emma Lynch